"We have full control over here." Olia's smile was evident in her voice as she reported from the hub's command center. The rebel members had infiltrated the base as Voltron fought off the battle cruisers, and now the place was emptied and all theirs to do with as they pleased. The rebel ships who were able were already on their way to free the planets that resided under this base's reign.

"Great. Good work everyone." Shiro leaned back in his chair, breathing heavily. That battle hadn't been any easy one in the least. They had used Hunk's shoulder cannon until it overheated, and after that they had picked off as many ships as they could by using lasers and brunt force. In the end, they had split up into separate lions to tackle the remaining battle ships, and they put up quite the fight. He could hear the exhaustion in everyone's voices over the comms.

"Great job, guys!" Lance seemed to melt into his seat as his muscles relaxed. It had been a close one for him a few times there and now that the adrenaline was winding down, he could feel the exhaustion in his bones.

"So who's going to clean this place up now…?" Hunk stared out into junkyard of metal scraps that littered the space around the hub. Now that they had liberated such a huge area, cleaning upafter battles was an actual concern.

"I'll get my team to start work on it." Matt sat back down in his chair, after finding himself standing during the whole battle due to adrenaline. He gave Pidge a high five at their victory. "You're amazing, you know."

"Yeah, I know." Pidge grinned. "But I couldn't do it without everyone else. I don't want to clean up this mess after all."

Matt laughed sarcastically. "Yeah, yeah, leave all the dirty work to your big brother, I see how it is."

Pidge gave him a grin that said "well yeah, isn't that how this works?" Matt rolled his eyes, but he was still smiling. Besides, she was the one with the dirty work really. She just fought an entire fleet of enemies. Cleaning up was the easy part.

"Shiro." Allura's voice cut their their humor, sounding rather somber for it being just after a victory. "I feel we must discuss the fact that we cannot form the sword. The sword is Voltron's most valuable weapon. We cannot afford to be without it."

"I know." Shiro agreed, staying quiet for a moment. Since Keith's absence, this problem hadn't arisen until today, and now it was a reality. He glanced down at his own bayard. He had never activated his bayard before. Maybe…if it was a sword or knife of some sort…maybe he could form the sword.

"Shiro?" Lance's concern brought him back to attention and he put his bayard away for now.

"Let's head back to the castle and talk about all of this. Coran?" He turned his lion around to regroup and head back home.

"How did it go?" He heard Coran's ever cheery voice on the other end of the comm, and it sounded like Shiro's call had eased some worry in him. "Were you all successful?"

"Yes." Allura answered with a smile as all five lions gathered together and made way in the direction of the castle. "We have complete control of the hub, and Olia's team is already being dispatched to the various planets to relieve them of Galra control. Later, Hunk and I will go to the freed planets and see if they'll be willing to help the coalition."

"Yeah, so it seems like Lotor wasn't lying." Hunk added. "And it wasn't a trap. So what are we going to do about that…? Are we going to accept his deal?"

"I don't think we should trust him that easily." Lance frowned. "It's not like this place was under armed. There were literally thousands of ships ready for us, even if they weren't waiting for us."

"Yes, but did you really expect Zarkon to let us just hold onto a third of his territory without any trouble?" Pidge questioned him. "I think it's expected that he'll keep sending more and more fleets after us."

"Which is exactly why we need to keep expanding and gaining allies to join the coalition." Shiro's authoritative voice always got everyone's attention. "This victory gained us more planets in one go than any other battle before. Without Lotor, it could have taken months to find this place, or countless battles trying to free each planet individually while this base sent out reinforcements. We have to give Lotor credit that this is a huge win for us. I'm not saying I trust him yet, but it warrants some discussion."

Lance let out a slightly irritated groan at that and diverted his attention elsewhere. "Have you heard from Keith and Kolivan?"

"I received word that they arrived at the outpost about twenty dobashes ago." Coran relayed as he spotted the lions nearing the castle. "I haven't heard anything from them since then. But you know how those Blades of Marmora work. They like to stay mysterious."

"Well, they do specialize in stealth missions." Shiro tried to instill a little reassurance in his team. "I'm sure we'll hear from them soon."

"Unless it was a trap." Lance murmured under his breath, knowing Shiro would hear him but he didn't care. Shiro had chosen not to listen to him from the beginning and he had to admit he was a little frustrated for it. He was supposed to be his right hand, and help aid him, but he felt more like he was just being treated like…well like he was still a leg.

He didn't get the chance to hear Shiro's response, however, before his mind was suddenly filled with Red's roar. He sounded…distressed? Frantic? Lance gripped the controls, his face etched in worry. "What's wrong, buddy…?"

Red twisted on his own accord, pulling Lance away from the castle entrance. He stared into the empty space around him, but he couldn't see any danger, and nothing was on the sensors. Red picked up speed and shot off in the opposite direction of the castle, refusing to obey Lance's commands to stop.

"Lance! Where are you going?!" Pidge pulled Green around and headed after him, soon followed by the other three lions.

"It's not me, it's Red. He's freaking out." Lance attempted to turn around and head back towards the others, but his stubborn lion refused. If he'd learned anything from being a Paladin of Voltron it was that the lions never responded to the force of their pilot. So he let go of the controls and closed his eyes. "Come on, bud. Talk to me. What's going on?"

Almost immediately, Red forced an image into his mind. An explosion. It was an outpost and it was being blown to pieces. The Blade's ship. Keith! Lance's eyes snapped open just as he heard alarms beginning to blare over the comms from Coran's end. "Coran, we need a warp hole to the second location, and we need it now!"

"Oh, quiznak." Coran moved quickly to set up the wormhole with Allura's residual essence, hoping it would be enough to get them there. His screens were blazing red as his visual of the information outpost went up in flames and smoke. His systems approved the wormhole and he practically slammed his hand down on the button to create one. "Hurry!"

A small wormhole formed in front of the lions and Lance pushed Red's speed to the limit, pulling away from the others. On the other end he was met with an outpost that was now almost nonexistent. It had been completely torn into pieces that now floated in shards across an empty space.

"Where are they?" Lance's heart rate had accelerated and his grip on Red's controls made his knuckles turn white. His eyes scanned the wreckage, hoping to spot someone. Kolivan, Keith, heck even a Galra, if it let him know that someone could have survived this. Red surged forward, gracefully dodging and spinning around wreckage.

"Come on, Keith. You can't die here." Lance was standing now, still gripping the controls. "Come on, Keith. Come on."

There. He spotted what Red was locked onto. Among all the wreckage, he spotted that familiar black mullet, and at the sight of him, Red seemed to speed up even more. They were on him in an instant and Red opened his mouth, scooped Keith right up and immediately spun to head back to the castle.

Lance jumped from his controls –not that he was in any control right now anyway– the second Red's jaw shut. He barely saw Pidge's green lion do the same, having spotted Kolivan nearby. Lance leaped through the doors to the Lion's entrance all the while repeating the mantra Don't be dead. Don't be dead. Don't be dead.

Keith was there and moving, choking, writhing for breath that he couldn't get from his torn suit. He laid on his side gripping his chest and covered in blodo that was quickly pooling beneath him. He was desperately heaving for air, but every gasp he got was pushed from him as he choked up blood and his chest was on fire with pain.

Lance skidded to his knees beside him, taking in his condition in horror. He'd never seen so much blood before in his life.His front half and face was almost unscathed. But his back had been torn to shreds from projectiles from the explosions and he was covered in deep, bleeding lacerations all along his back and the backs of his calves. A huge chuck of metal had pierced him just beneath his left shoulder blade, and it was no mystery that it had pierced through his rib cage and lung, but it hadn't gone completely through and it hadn't hit his heart. Lance could see his muscles tense in pain around the metal shard as he struggled to breathe. Every time he tried it resulted in a horrible gurgling and coughing as blood and air tried to share the same passageway.

Lance pulled Keith into his arms so he could get a closer look at his back. Should he try to remove the metal shard? Would it help him breathe? Would he bleed to death if he did? The cuts in his back were already so bad. He gripped the metal, hoping that if he got it out that he could get some air in his lungs, but Keith cried out in pain when Lance touched it, and he immediately pulled away. "Guys?! What do I do?! There's…there's a piece of metal in his chest. I-I don't know what to do!"

"Don't do anything." Coran's voice was firm and experienced. "We don't know how many major arteries it's impacted. If he's alive, keep it there. Pulling it out could kill him. Get him to a healing pod as quickly as you can. I have two ready for you."

"Lance..." Keith's words were barely audible among his desperate, weakening gasping. His fingers gripped Lance's arm tight, though he couldn't lessen their trembling. His other hand fumbled in his hip pouch before he actually managed to grab something. He raised it to Lance the best he could. "T-Take…it…"

"We're here. Just hold on." Lance took Keith's hand just as he felt the jolt of his lion landing in the Castle's bay. Keith dropped the information chip into Lance's palm as Red knelt down and opened his mouth. Lance quickly tucked the chip into his pocket, before sliding one of his arms under Keith's knees and the other he gently wrapped around his shoulders, trying not to touch the shard. Keith's eyes were glazing over. His breathing was turning more into a slow, futile struggle. Lance hoisted him up into his arms and stood up just as Shiro appeared at the entrance. It took one glance to drain every bit of color from Shiro's face as Lance ran past him, and he followed close at Lance's heels. From the green Lion, Hunk, Pidge and Matt were in a similar position with Kolivan. Lance only caught a fleeting glance, but he looekd as much of a bloody mess as Keith, if not more.

Coran was waiting in the healing bay with two pods at the ready. Keith had gone limp in Lance's arms from pain at all the movement. His fingers still weakly gripped Lance's arm, but the only energy he could muster was tiny desperate gasps at the air. Quickly, Shiro helped Lance lift him into a pod, where he held him up so that Lance could rip out the protruding shard of metal. Coran instantly commanded the pod to shut the very second it was out and Keith was engulfed in his cryo chamber.

Kolivan was in a worse state then Keith. His entire body, aside from his lower chest and stomach, was completely covered in burns and lacerations. He had countless projectiles embedded into his thick skin and huge gashes in his back and upper arms. Hunk and Allura lifted him into the pod as Pidge and Matt focused on pulling out the biggest of the shards that they could before Coran closed the pod or risk Kolivan bleeding to death. The glass of both pods immediately frosted over so that the occupants could not be seen from the outside. This was a process that only occurred when the sensors deemed the occupant to be in too bad of shape for the healing process to be observed.

Lance stepped back from the pod, still breathing heavily from the dying adrenaline in his veins. He looked down at himself. He was completely covered in Keith's blood and as he glanced at the others, they were all drenched in Kolivan's too. There was silence, and everyone's eyes eventually fell on Shiro.

For the first time, Shiro actually looked shaken. He wasn't pale like he got when he was suffering a flashback; he was ashen. He stared at the pods, but his eyes were glazed and his mind was far away. After a long time of silence he finally let out a heavy sigh. "Everyone get cleaned up. We have a lot to talk about."