Finding Hope Chapter 23: Long Live Zarkon, a voltron: legendary defender fanfic

"Open and close your fists for me," Coran told her. It had been a little over a week since the night of her terrors, and she was thankful to Shiro who suggested keeping it secret from the rest. Not that she didn't love the other she just knew them all too well, she knew Allura would not want her to be left alone in fear of it happening again. It reminded her of something her mom would do, then Lance would question her about what had happened pushing her until she snapped at him, which she hated it when that happened. Then there was Hunk, who would bring her meals and want to help her with her work and so forth, she loved Hunk working with her, not for her.

It's been two and a half weeks since she and Matt returned to the castle and everyone was anxious to get back in the fight against the Galra and their new leader. They suspected it was Lotor, but they couldn't be sure. And no one was more anxious then she was. She was able to do her simple training which seemed more like physical therapy than training to her, but she was pleased when Shiro would tell her that they were going to do a team-building exercise. Which she usually didn't like but wanted to train with her team as much as possible, so she never complained.

She obeyed Coran request and squeezed her hands shut then would reopen them. "Any pain?" he quizzed her. "No.," she said in ah. "Back on earth, a break like that would take weeks to heal!" Hunk cooed. She nodded in agreement "Well it looks all good. you should be able to land a solid punch in a couple of Quintans" Coran stated with excitement "Speaking of punches" Lance started "Where did you learn to punch like that?" Which earned him a glare from Shiro. She turned a slight red and hoped no one noticed "The old witch had it coming" she said voice shaking a little, she hoped no one noticed that either. She jumped down of the counter and began to walk away "Keith" she said simply "Keith taught me" they all fell quiet.

As Pidge exited, Shiro turned on Lance. "Lance, we talked about this," he said "I know, I know it just slipped" he replied "Try not to do it again please," Shiro told him as he placed a hand on his shoulder. "I know it's hard not knowing fully what went on, but we must respect her timing." Lance nodded and left the room without another word.

"I'm going to go make milkshakes" Hunk started tapping his fingers together.

And with that, he left. "You must not blame yourself for something you can't control," Allura told Shiro. "I know, It's just hard we need Voltron more than ever, but I don't want to push her either." Allura put a comforting hand on his shoulder and without saying anything more also turned and left leaving Shiro alone with his thoughts.

Pidge found Matt in the lounge where she sat down beside him. "You got your casts off! That's great." She smiled slightly at his excitement. "yeah it feels great" before either good say another word Hunk entered holding two milkshakes.

"I made celebratory milkshakes for you two" He chimed "Just a little gift from me and Kaltenecher, No big deal." He passed the Holt siblings each a milkshake, then continued "Fun fact about Alteans they don't get brain freeze. Coran and Allura just totally hoovered up their shakes in one slurp! I've never seen anything like it before" he chuckled as he sat between them. They sat in silence for a good long second before Hunk asked: "So, like, what have you been doing since you got busted out of Galra prison?" He froze for a sec then added rather sheepishly "The first time?" Matt chuckled lightly before he responded, "I've been stationed at a listening outpost, monitoring Galra radio chatter."

Hunk squeaked "Are you serious? Then you should totally check out the Galra finder Pidge built. We used it to track down a Galra fleet and save a planet."

Pidge chimed in forgetting all of her worries "Hunk made the locator that led us to the first Voltron Lion, and we just built an upgraded version of it to track Lotor."

Matt looked at his younger sister with pride and said "Wow, Pidge. Dad would be so proud if he could see what you've done here.

They briefly shared a smile before Pidge stood "I should show you what we are working on, I totally forgot with everything that has been going on" Both Matt and Hunk smiled at her, thinking the same thing "There the Pidge I know and love"

Upon reaching the hanger, Pidge quickly showed him her work and sat down next to him as he stood there and marveled over her work.

"This is a pretty sweet algorithm for locating Galra targets within a statistically acceptable margin of error. And I love that you color-coded it, because what are we, animals?" They both shared a laugh.

"Ugh, you two are definitely related" Hunk stated as he flopped into a seat putting his feet up and leaning back into the chair.

"Hunk, using the Fraunhofer lines to track Voltron, and then the comet... I mean, that's genius." Matt praised

"Oh, well, yeah, I try" He replied trying to land a space Cheeto in his mouth and missed.

Matt continued "They say Fraunhofer was the greatest glassmaker in Europe, and that when he died, he took all his greatest recipes to the grave with him.

"I want a Fraunhofer glass." Hunk complained once again missing his Cheeto toss.

"So check this out" Matt pulled out a chip the size of a credit card. Both Hunk and Pidge stared in ah as Matt continued to speak. "This has all the relevant data from my time with the rebels. I think if we plug this info into the setup you guys have here, it might fill in the gaps."

Pidge stared at her brother, and Hunk sat up very interested in what he had to say next. "Then, we just might have the best ant-Galra intelligence mining operation in this or any other reality." Matt finished

Hunk frowned "This one time, we went to another reality. It was pretty lame.

"What?" Matt questioned "You were in a different reality?" he turned on Pidge pointing the chip at her. She smiled smugly as she snagged the chip out of his hand. "No big deal" she wheeled her chair to her computer, leaving Matt in the dust. He smiled big "My little sister." he chirped with pride

They all started typing at different parts of the program, Pidge on her laptop while Hunk and Matt worked on two of the castles holographic screens. They all were silent for a while as they all worked. Matt was the one to break the silence "I think we've just about got it." The large monitor in front of them beeped they all cheered and high fived.

Pidge sat in her chair hand behind her head staring at the screen, as Hunk began to talk she turned her head to where he was standing. "This is unbelievable. We're tracking Galra fleet movement almost live." He said in a light whisper.

"I think I know a few tweaks we can make to extend our range" was Pidges giddy reply.

Matt walked back to his holographic screen on Pidge's right. "Hold on Pidge," He told her "What's up?" She questioned her brother.

"It's a scrambled message. I've collected hundreds of 'em" he said sourness in his voice. "I never crack 'em" he frowned.

"Let me see." she replayed Matt flicked his wrist to the right and sent it to Pidge's screen then walked over to her side.

"I'm guessing this isn't just a simple number-for-letter swap." She deadpanned

"I've run these through every kind of decryption technology I can think of, and I've spent days with just the numbers and a Galra language log. Nothing" He told them

"Maybe they're not words. Maybe they're just numbers" Hunk added

"Maybe they're a frequency" Pidge wondered

"A quantum signal that broadcasts other frequencies to go to?" Matt asked then said "Its too high. These are more than 3,000 gigahertz."

Pidge began typing "Invert it."

"What?" The older Holt asked

"For every wave we receive, there's only partial transmittance, right?" She asked even though she knew the answer.

Hunk caught on to what she was doing "Oh, right, yeah. So, we figure the transmission coefficient..."

Matt smiled and added, "And tune for the frequency of the reflected waves."

Pidge typed at the computer tell the frequency's linked they all cheered. But soon stopped to listen "Member of the 7th, 11th, and 14th fleet assemble to rally point trox-lyte immediately. Engage targets at coordinates in next transmission... By order of Emperor Zarkon."

Pidge's heart seemed to skip a beat, she heard Hunk say the words that couldn't appear to form in her own mouth "Zarkon is alive?" She looked up at the big monitor in front of her "Guy look at this" she stammered

"I've never seen troops mobilization on this level before" Matt stated

"What are they attacking?" Hunk questioned

"That just it." Pidge began fingers trembling "As far as I can tell, nothing. There are no planets, no rebel ships, no Blade of Marmora bases, nothing."

Pidge took a deep breath fighting back the memories of Zarkons evil voice claiming "I will be back" she shoved the thought to the back of her mind knowing that she would lose it, and be zero help to her team if that happened. "Pidge you ok?" Matt asked she nodded her head slowly "We need to tell the others."

"You guys stay here I'll go get Shiro," She said as she stood and started running down the hallway with Zarkons voice in her mind " I'll be back she mine!"

"Shiro!" She called as she ran down hallway after hallway. "Shiro!" She called again stopping for breath, she put her hands on her knees causing her hair to fall in her face.

"Pidge! What's wrong?" Shiro skidded to a halt in front of her worry painted all over his face. "Zarkon" she panted "He alive." she stood up straight looking into his eyes, she still had to tilt her head back to do so but not as much as she used to. "What? Are you sure?" he questioned her. "I'm not crazy this time." was her reply "I didn't say you where I just want to know how you found this out," He told her "I'll show you" she spun on her heels and took off running in the direction she came from Shiro not far behind her.

Matt and Hunk stood in silence, the only sound was Hunk chewing on his Cheetos. Matt broke the silence "Thank you." Hunk stopped chewing looking confused "For what?" "Well," Matt began "Katie has always had a hard time fitting in, no one liked her. Honestly, I think they were all just jealous" His face softened "But here, she fights in so well, you guys treat her so well. And she loves you guys so much" Hunk smiled at Matt "Well, we love her, and I honestly it's no big deal, she's a good person. If people don't like her, there's something wrong with them, not her." Hunk spoke softly. They fell silent again, tell they heard footsteps "I got Shiro" Pidge remarked out of breath. "Matt, show me," Shiro said as he approached. Matt unmuted the transition, as it played Shiro's face hardened. "This is a problem we need to tell the others," Shiro said. He reached down and spoke into the ship's intercom "Team Voltron, meet on the bridge, Pidge, Matt and Hunk have something they need to show us. Pidge grabbed her laptop, Matt grabbed his chip and Hunk grabbed his bowl of Cheetos. Then they all headed to the bridge.

After the Treo showed the group what they had found they all fell into silence.

Allura spoke up first "Whoever they're attacking we have to help."

"I don't like it. We should be gathering intelligence, not diving into a fight without knowing why especially now that we know Zarkon is alive" Shiro said eyeing his teammates.

Pidge cut in "We could go check it out."

"I think they'd probably notice us," Lance said more severe than usual.

"Not if we're cloaked" She corrected

"You have cloaking? Who are you?" Matt asked in ah. She smiled sheepishly but with pride.

"I'm not sure it's safe for just the Green Lion," Shiro said. he left out the obvious fact that Pidge has not been part of a battle since before she found her brother.

Pidge looked at him with a face he hadn't seen in a while, a face full of happiness and carefree. "I'm pretty sure I can upgrade Voltron with cloaking. We could all go" Lance elbowed her gently in the arm "Were you waiting for your big brother to show up before you rolled that one out?" He squeaked.

She scratched the back of her head as she explained: "It's something I've been working on, but I can't pilot the Green Lion and operate the cloaking at the same time." She narrowed her eyes into slits. Grinning wildly at her brother she added "But if I had a co-pilot..." Matt cut in "Absolutely" He put out his hand to her, and she grabbed it firmly. Shiro took a deep breath "Let's get to the lions."

"We're getting close. Everyone, get ready" Shiro's voice said through their comm link.

"Go ahead. Run the cloaking subroutine" Pidge instructed her brother. "Got it" He replied as he began typing at his holographic consul. "Initializing cloak. I'm not sure how long we can keep this up." He finished

"All right, let's take a look at who the Galra are attacking," Allura called

"What the cheese? It's Galra-on-Galra violence, again" Lance observed

"Oh, these people just do not like each other." Hunk groaned

"Whose ships are those?" Pidge asked even though it was apparently the prince cowering from the fight.

"It's Lotor" Allura answered never the less

"Lotor and Zarkon must be fighting for control of the empire" Shiro added

"Guys, those ships are getting awfully close" Hunk's worried voice came through the commlink

The ships zoomed passed "Uh-oh" Matt began "The trails from Lotor's ship drives messed with our cloaking spectrum." "Can you find a workaround?" Pidge asked her brother.

"It's too late. Our cover's been blown. We may have to engage." Pidge could tell that Shiro was worried by the tone of his voice as he spoke those words

Voltron darted around avoiding shoots that were thrown at them "Hunk, use your Bayard. Shiro grunts "You got it. "Hunk replied. Hunk thrust his Bayard into his Lion and turned it. A big cannon formed on Voltron's shoulder. Taking out the ships

"All right, that'll hold them. Let's get out of here" Shiro sighed with relief.

"Hey wait." Pidge called over the comms "I'm getting a transmission."

"Can you play it?" Shiro asked "Yeah just give me a second"

"Attention, citizens of the Galra Empire. From this day forward, my son Lotor is to be regarded as a fugitive criminal of the empire. All citizens are authorized to use deadly force to stop him, or any of his soldiers."

Pidge was glad that her video feed was turned off and that Matt was behind her, she didn't want them to see the fear in her eyes and the signal tear that ran down her cheek.

The transmission continued "I repeat, Prince Lotor is an enemy of the state. Engage with extreme prejudice. Kill on sight" The transmission ended, and they all stayed quiet the rest of the way to the castle.