**I do not own Voltron: Legendary Defender (duh)
CHAPTER 31: TESTED
Just when Keith thought they had a chance to reforge their bond as paladins, just when he thought they could've mustered up enough unified power to reform Voltron, of course some new space danger threw his hopes and plans all out of whack. That space cloud or storm or nebula or whatever it was that hit them had drained their lions of all power. And whatever energy it contained to do such a thing had completely shocked their unprotected passengers, leaving Shiro, Mari, Scarlett, Coran, Romelle, and Kosmo in a frozen and unresponsive state. Luckily their vitals were stable, but for how long, no one knew.
To make things worse, the thing had come back when they'd been in the middle of trying to tie the drifting lions together. In the chaos that ensued, they'd managed to grab onto one another, but they'd been separated from the lions in the process. Now it was just them: Keith, Lance, Hunk, Pidge, and Allura, all floating listlessly in the middle of space. Unprotected. Lost. And without any resources.
But this would be okay, Keith tried to assure them. Tried to assure himself. They would be fine. The life of a paladin was full of the unexpected. They'd faced many deadly challenges and situations before. They could figure this out. They just had to stick together. They could handle this.
The timer on Keith's helmet chirped. He'd set it to chime every hour, helping him keep track of time in the daunting and inky vastness around them. This was the fifth time it had gone off, signaling their fifth hour lost in space.
He swallowed back a tired groan. Be a leader. Stay calm. Check on the others, he reminded himself. "Everyone sound off."
"Lance here."
"Pidge here."
"Allura here."
They all sounded miserable. But at least there was still some energy in their voices. At least they were still alive and with him. The only one who hadn't answered though…
Keith's heartbeat escalated in the long pause that ensued. "Hunk?" he finally prompted.
"...I'm hiding."
Keith sighed, his fear ebbing. "I need you to sound off, Hunk," he urged him, firm but not unkind. "It's important to maintain discipline and mental acuity in these situations. These techniques helped my mom and I through the Quantum Abyss."
"Keith is right," Allura agreed, coming to his aid. "Being lost in space has been known to drive one mad. Too much time contemplating infinity is not good for the mind."
"I like to keep busy calculating pi out as far as I can," Pidge said, if only to make conversation after such a long hour of silence. "The record is four quadrillion, but that's using the Hadoop parallelization framework. I'm just using my brain."
"Pfft…Hadoop," Hunk chuckled weakly.
Well, at least she had something to keep herself busy, Keith thought to himself. He'd been so bored, he'd carefully gone over every Blade combat technique and move that had been drilled into his brain during training. Then he'd resorted to internally reviewing the Blade archives Kolivan had made him spend hours memorizing, flipping through his mental pages of ancient writings, blueprints, and old intel. But even that was starting to get tedious, and he was grateful for the timer's interruption.
"Wait. Guys!" Lance suddenly exclaimed, startling their whole group. "Look! Lights!"
"Told you Lance would go crazy first," Hunk smirked.
"No, no, no, no! I see them!" Pidge gasped, turning to where Lance was pointing. "There really are lights!"
Everyone shifted in their linked huddle. Sure enough, a fast approaching cluster of tiny white lights was illuminating the once endless darkness.
"Perhaps it's a ship," Allura said, a hopeful smile gracing her features.
"Oh, yes! Yes!" Hunk cheered, eagerly pumping a fist in the air. "We're rescued!"
Keith could feel everyone's excitement spike in an instant. Even his own doubt was ebbing, relief threatening to take him.
But as the light drew closer, they turned out not to be a ship. Rather, they were a fluttering flock of some sort of space…bird? Fish? Bug? Keith wasn't quite sure. He hadn't seen anything like them before, not even in the years he'd spent in the Quantum Abyss. As they swirled around their small group, unbothered by the human presence, he was stunned into silence, content to just watch them fly by with breezy ease and elegance.
"Amazing," Pidge breathed in awe.
"They're beautiful," Allura whispered, tempted to reach out and touch one.
"We should follow them," Hunk suggested.
Keith's sense of caution instantly returned. "What?"
"Yeah. They must be heading somewhere. Like a hive or something," Hunk explained. "Wherever that is, it must be better than floating around here just, like, starving to death."
He had a point. And as the others looked to Keith, he realized they were waiting for him to make a decision. This wasn't the rescue they'd been hoping for. And there was no guarantee these things weren't dangerous or would actually lead them to a safe location. They weren't the familiar comfort and protection that the lions provided, but…they were something. And something was better than nothing.
Keith frowned, his hesitancy wavering. "Hunk's right. Let's follow them," he decided. "Everyone stay together."
They activated their jetpacks, ready to go. But the second they did, the flock of creatures abruptly disappeared in a glittering burst, forcing startled gasps from their lips.
"Where'd they go?" Lance shrilled, looking desperately all around them. The strange beings were nowhere in sight, leaving behind not a single trace of their presence. It was like they had never been there in the first place.
"Were they even real?" Allura wondered, the confusion and creeping despair evident in her question.
"I guess they could've been a hallucination," Pidge said, slowly and unsurely. "But that usually only happens when you're…going mad."
An uneasy silence engulfed them at the implication that they were all slowly starting to lose it. A shared hallucination. Space madness. The loss of a sliver of hope and safety. It all made Keith's irritation flare, and he had to grit his teeth to hold back a furious curse.
As they resigned to floating listlessly once more, he struggled to calm down. Breathe in, hold, breathe out. He couldn't lose his nerve in front of them. He was their leader again, remember? He had to stay cool. Stay calm. Stay patient and focused. He couldn't lose hope.
But as the hours dragged on, it quickly became apparent that such a thing was easier said than done.
This was nothing like the two years he'd spent in the Quantum Abyss. At least back then, he'd had Krolia to have meaningful conversations with. He'd had plenty of food and water and air to thrive off of. He'd had enrichment, fishing and hiking and hunting and training and cooking and exploring and playing with Kosmo. He'd been grounded, his own two feet set firmly on the ground.
But out here, he had none of that.
Sure he had the company of Lance, Allura, Hunk, and Pidge. In their initial nervousness, they'd all been chatty too. But there was only so much they could talk about in a sea of nothingness, and now they were dead silent, their energy and hope draining with each passing minute.
It was a terrible thing, being trapped with his thoughts for so long. His mind had long since begun to wander, dipping dangerously into his old pessimistic nature and the dreadful mess of 'what ifs' and worst-case scenarios.
What if they never got out of this mess? They would never reach home. Their bodies would be lost forever in space. Without their paladins, the lost and powerless lions would easily get scooped up by pirates. Shiro, Mari, Coran, Scarlett, Romelle, and Kosmo would be captured and imprisoned with no hope of revival from their frozen state. They would die.
He and the others would all fail at saving the universe. It would be such a lame and tragic and disappointing way for the legend of Voltron to end. Krolia and Kolivan would never know what happened to them. Matt and the rest of the coalition rebels would continue to be hunted by the enemy. Sam, Pidge's mom, Hunk's family, Lance's family, Adam, Shiro and Mari's parents…they'd continue to wait on Earth, never to see their lost loved ones again. So many people who had been counting on them to return and save them would suffer because he and the others had all been swallowed by the mysteries of space.
It made Keith so angry. So irritated. More than he'd felt in years. Why was he so helpless now? Why was he still so weak? After all he'd been through, after all his struggling and enduring, he would fail as a leader. He'd die here and disappear and be forgotten to the universe. They all would. And it would be all his fault.
The sudden beeping of his alarm dragged him out of his dark and heavy thoughts. He blinked, his eyelids heavy as he tried to focus on his visor display. They were into hour ten now…Or was it twelve?
…Whatever. It was time to check if everyone was still alive.
"Everyone…" Keith paused and swallowed thickly, his voice hoarse and unexpectedly weak. "Everyone sound off."
"Allura here."
"Lance here."
"Pidge here."
They sounded no better than him. And once again, Hunk hadn't answered.
A fresh spark of frustration ignited inside Keith. For the love of – How hard was it to give a simple "Here" so he wouldn't be sent into a panic attack thinking one of them was dead?!
"Hunk, sound off immediately!" he snapped, craning his neck to shoot a nasty glare at the Yellow Paladin.
"Keith," Allura briskly began to scold him. "You don't have to – "
"It's okay, Allura. It's okay," Hunk quickly piped up, snuffing the argument before it could begin. "I was just kind of, you know, lost in this fantasy that we'd get to Earth and, you know, the Garrison would throw us a parade and all that stuff, and then, you know, maybe I'd meet some hotshot pilot who wanted to check out the Yellow Lion, and then maybe the Yellow Lion would take a shine to her, obviously, and I'd be like, 'Whoa. Whoa. I can't stand in-between you two. The bond is strong here.'"
Keith pressed his lips into a thin line as he listened to Hunk. Like it was that easy to shirk such an important duty, such a heavy burden. Keith himself had tried to escape it, certain it had been the right choice. But it hadn't, and as a result, he'd been pulled back to their team, returned as the Black Lion's paladin.
They all shared a complex bond that had developed and strengthened over the years. After all the battles they'd fought together, after all the adventures they'd been on, they were all more than just teammates and friends. It was supposed to be undeniable now that they were supposed to be the heroes of the universe, chosen by the mystical Voltron lions. Nobody else could take any of their places.
And yet Hunk was talking about leaving the team. Leaving them. Now, of all times. How could he even think about something like that? Why would he even think about something like that? Unless their so-called space family really meant nothing to him. Unless the bond they shared really meant absolutely nothing.
"Hunk, what are you talking about?" Lance sighed, his own patience thinning in the face of his friend's rambling.
"Fantasizing about quitting Voltron," Keith drawled, blunt and with a scathing bitterness in his tone.
"No, no, no, no, not quitting. No," Hunk hurried to explain himself. "Just, you know, being the bigger man. Just stepping aside to pass the baton down to a younger generation."
Keith's vexation only grew. What younger generation? What the hell was Hunk even talking about? He was only eighteen, for fucks sake, he wasn't old! No one else could do this but them. They had to keep going. They had to keep trying! If they did, they would defeat the Galra and they wouldn't need a younger generation to pilot the lions. The war would be over. They wouldn't need Voltron anymore. Only then could they call it quits.
"Am I quite wrong or is Hunk still very young by Earth standards?" Allura asked after a moment.
"No, I think time is different for me," Hunk said, a hint of amusement creeping into his tone. "Like I'm on dog years or something."
Hunk's optimism, the way he was cheerily escaping into such a ridiculous fantasy while he ignored them and their current dire situation…it was all bringing Keith to the verge of completely losing his cool. But before he could lash out with an order to shut up, their group was assaulted by a storm of red.
It appeared out of nowhere, winds raging and lightning flashing across their vision. Bolts of energy wrapped around their legs, pulling apart their back-to-back formation and threatening to separate them completely. They kept a death grip on one another's hands, but they could only last so long against this unknown entity.
"What's happening?" Pidge screamed, terror bright in her eyes.
Lance grunted, visibly struggling. "What is this?"
Allura tried bringing herself closer to the others, but the lightning kept tugging her back. "I'm being pulled away!"
"Something is attacking us!" Hunk exclaimed.
"Yeah, no shit!" Keith wanted to retort. But he was too busy trying not to lose his own hold on them. His eyes stung, his rage flooding his thoughts. His ears rang with the hammering of his heart against his ribs, and the others' voices faded, drowned out by the sound of his own seething breaths.
Don't let go, don't let go…
They don't really care about you.
"Keith, what do we do?"
You can't do anything.
Shut up! Just shut up and don't let go!
"I can't hold on!"
You're alone. Just let go.
DON'T LET GO!
Keith's hand tore away from Pidge's in an instant. Manifesting his bayard, he tried to summon his sword, but nothing happened. Still, he didn't let that stop him from swinging wildly, furiously, at the invisible force attacking them. He desperately tried to chase away the lightning and the voices that threatened to tear them apart, ignoring how his wrist was slipping out of Hunk's fingers.
Then as soon as it had happened, the red storm faded, bringing them back to the empty pitch of space. Keith panted hard, barely registering how he'd disconnected from Hunk, and how Pidge promptly boosted herself forward and latched onto his arm. She hugged it tightly, using her whole body to link him back to their line before he could float away. The others were staring at him, flabbergasted, eyes wide with fear as they waited for him to speak. They were looking at him like he was crazy, and it was enough to make him snap.
"My bayard won't work. We don't know where the lions are. We're being attacked by things we can't even see!" he growled.
His frustration was overflowing, but he couldn't tell if he was pissed at the others' lack of anger at what had just happened to them, or if he was simply dissatisfied with the way that entity had fled before he could land an actual hit.
The others were quiet for a painfully long second.
"Keith, what are you talking about?" Lance asked, and his voice carried an honest concern and confusion that Keith so rarely received from him. It was a sure sign that Lance was being one hundred percent serious. "There's nothing out there. It's just us."
Keith wordlessly stared at Lance, slowly processing his words. He scanned their surroundings in search of any remaining signs of their enemy, ready to retort and prove him wrong. But to his dismay, he saw nothing, as if…
…As if it had never been there in the first place.
He was hungry and thirsty. He was angry and irritated. But more than anything, he was just tired. Tired of waiting around for nothing. Tired of thinking. Tired of leading. Tired of hoping for a rescue that would never come.
Keith's timer chimed again. He ignored it. He'd stopped paying attention to it a while ago. He'd stopped counting the hours. It didn't matter anymore anyway, now did it? They were all screwed, and the ticking clock just reminded him of their inevitable and approaching doom.
"Keith, shouldn't we sound off?" Lance asked, breaking their hour-long quietness.
Keith was almost tempted not to respond. Almost. "What's the point?"
Lance let out a soft huff, but didn't argue with him. He'd gotten verbal confirmation that Keith was alive, and that was all he really needed. "Lance here," he sounded off.
"Pidge here."
"Allura here."
"I am Hunk."
A beat of silence passed. Then two.
"I wonder how my dad and Matt are doing," Pidge said, once again trying to keep their conversation going before they were all submerged in their own gloomy thoughts until the next check-in.
"Better than us, hopefully," Keith said, indulging her attempt. It was easier talking kindly to her. She was the only one in their group he wasn't currently annoyed with.
"My father had something he always said in dire situations," Allura piped up, still trying to remain painfully optimistic despite everything.
"'Give up'?" Keith muttered, the hollow words slipping from lips without a care.
She stiffened beside him. "Sorry?"
He'd hit a nerve. …Good. He wanted to keep going. He wanted to unleash all his pent up frustration and the bitter thoughts that were relentlessly gnawing away at him.
"It just doesn't seem like he was a real fighter when the chips were down," he continued, unfazed as Allura's whole form started to quiver with her escalating indignation.
"Keith, come on," Hunk gently scolded, vainly trying to keep their diminishing peace.
"You have a lot of nerve questioning someone's leadership," Allura spat back, ignoring him. "Seeing how you left us!"
"Allura, please," Hunk begged.
Keith's fury blazed anew. The nerve of her for trying to shift all the blame onto him! For one, none of them had even tried to stop him from leaving for the Blade of Marmora. None of them had even truly cared or acknowledged how hard leading had been for him back then. As soon as he wasn't needed anymore, as soon as they found someone better, they had just let him go, tossing him away like he was nothing.
Secondly, she was so damn hypocritical! She was supposed to lead the Voltron Coalition to victory. Yet she got distracted building Lotor's Sincline ships. She practically ditched Lance, Pidge, Hunk, and Shiro to help the enemy get exactly what he wanted. And who came back to fix everything when it all went to hell? Who had discovered and was trying to save the last remnants of her people? Who saved her and everyone else from being used by Lotor? Keith. Keith did that. He came back to lead them when he could've easily abandoned them, just like they had to him.
"As I recall, you were the one who got us all cozied up to Lotor," he fired back, raring to go and refusing to back down now.
"Keith, you ran away," Lance ground out, Keith's own supposed right hand turning against him in favor of defending the princess. "Maybe you should have just stayed away."
"Lance, Keith, everyone, stop!" Hunk shouted, adamant in intervening. Their linked group separated as he forced them to face him and hear his words. "Look, guys, I understand what's happening here. You're all brave heroes who don't know how to react to being scared, and it's causing you to attack one another. That or you're all going space mad. Hopefully, you're just scared. I'm scared all the time. I can talk you through it."
Keith glared at him, unmoved. "Sorry, Hunk. I guess I just don't know how to be a coward."
He'd intended for such words to be hurtful. Dry and offensive. Something intentionally mean enough to get the Yellow Paladin to shut up and back down. But Hunk didn't even flinch. Instead, he smiled.
"Right! That's what I'm saying," he said, sounding relieved.
But Keith's insult hadn't gone unmissed by Lance, who was all too familiar with his sarcasm and cruel jabs.
"Why don't you leave him alone, Keith?" he snapped, his eyes narrowed into a cold glower. "Just drift off by yourself, Mr. Lone Wolf."
It really was always meant to be this way, wasn't it? Him being alone and having no one or nowhere that truly wanted him. He'd simply been given these last few years to live in a false sense of hope out of pure luck, or perhaps, out of pity from the universe. But now, fate had finally caught up to him. And who was he to defy something as unstoppable as that?
"Fine."
Too tired to care anymore, Keith turned his back to them and activated his jetpack, propelling himself up and away. But before he could really get anywhere, Hunk surged forward and grabbed him. His grip was like a vise around Keith's ankle, and he easily pulled him to a stop.
"No, don't!" Hunk insisted. "We have to stay together!"
Together. What a fragile and meaningless thing that word had become. Keith stared down at Hunk, a numbing emptiness expanding inside his chest. Doubt and indifference weighed like a ton of bricks on his frazzled mind, but he didn't try freeing himself from the Yellow Paladin's clutches just yet.
"Why, Hunk?" he demanded. "Are we really even friends? Is there anything holding us together besides some messed up series of coincidences? I mean, what are we? Some chosen saviors? Do you really believe that? What are we even doing out here?!"
All at once, his deepest insecurities came spilling forth in a series of angry and unfiltered questions that made even Lance and Allura look taken aback, if not a bit regretful. Pidge looked so small as she gazed up at him, her brow pinched with a hurt uncertainty. Hunk was quiet for a moment, taking a steadying breath to steel himself and power through the pain of Keith's disbelief.
"We're doing what we have to," he said finally.
Keith tsked. That wasn't good enough. That wasn't the answer he had wanted. Doing what they had to…Hunk was only stopping him now out of obligation. Because he was their leader and Hunk thought they needed him. Needed him just for Voltron.
But they didn't need him. Not really.
Keith was done. He was done with being afraid. He was done with being a leader and worrying about them. He was done with this whole situation. He'd leave, just as Lance had suggested, living and dying on his own out here. He'd give them exactly what they wanted. And this time, he wouldn't bother coming back.
He tried to escape again, this time thrashing for freedom. "Let me go!" he growled, booting up his jetpack again. But even with its extra boost, Hunk wouldn't release him.
"No!" His hold on Keith remained infuriatingly firm. He stubbornly tugged him back, and Keith huffed, drained and without the energy to seriously kick him off.
"Uh, guys?" Pidge squeaked, interrupting their fight to draw their attention to a pinprick of light that had appeared in the distance.
"Is it more of those creatures?" Lance wondered.
"No, it appears to be a single source." Allura paused, squinting at the illuminated point as it came into focus. "It looks like a planet."
Sure enough, the light was indeed a planet. Covered in deep blue oceans and a familiar landscape of brown and green, it looked just like…
"No way," Lance whispered, his jaw dropping.
Keith blinked, wondering if he was seeing things again. But each time he reopened his eyes, it was still there, waiting for them. "It's…Earth," he realized in complete shock.
"That wave must have knocked us all the way across the universe!" Pidge grinned, a hint of a relieved laugh making her voice quiver.
"We're home!" Lance boosted himself forward, prompting the others to follow as he led the way towards their home planet. "We're gonna make it, guys!"
For once, Lance was right. Earth was right here in front of them. No more of this listless floating around in space. They were going home. They were going to be safe. They were going to live. A wave of relief washed over Keith, filling him with a giddy joy that made the dark clouds dissipate from his mind. He didn't even hear Hunk telling them to stop until he physically blocked their paths, placing himself between them and Earth.
"Stop! Everybody, stop!" He held up his arms in a pleading gesture, his expression tight with panic.
"Hunk, what are you doing?" Allura shrilled, incredulous, as if this was some sort of betrayal on his part.
"Stop it, Hunk!" Lance barked, and the unhinged impatience in his voice was piercing.
Still, Hunk didn't back down. "No, no, something is wrong!"
"Hunk, you're hallucinating! You're going space mad!" Pidge persisted, her cool all but lost. "Just let us take you home!"
They started pushing him towards the planet, refusing to listen to him and refusing to leave him behind. He thrashed against them, struggling one against four.
"No! Listen to yourselves! You're letting all of this get the better of you," he desperately pleaded for them to see reason. "There's no way that can be Earth!"
"Just trust us, Hunk," Allura urged, ignoring him with a delighted grin. "You'll thank us when we get there."
But despite their insistence, Hunk wasn't having it. He continued to fight back, pushing his jetpack to its limits. "Let…me…go!" he ground out, and with a final grunt of effort, he broke through, zipping behind them to freedom. He summoned his bayard, his cannon manifesting in his hands before he fired at Earth.
The scorching beam took them all off guard as it soared past, startling them into a halt and interrupting their trek home. The shot landed with a dull explosion, and the planet suddenly shimmered and shifted. The illusion of Earth melted away, revealing the massive blue eye of a gigantic, cosmic sting-ray-like creature. And its sights were trained solely on their tiny team of five.
"What the quiznak is that thing?" Lance groaned, his disappointment quick to be replaced with dread.
Pidge swallowed thickly, her own fears rising. "Hunk was right."
Allura looked just as disturbed by the creature's reveal. "He saved us."
Hunk continued to hold his blaster at the ready, a steady reminder that they weren't in the clear just yet. "Here it comes!" he warned them just as the thing opened its humongous mouth and revealed several glowing sets of sharp teeth.
They screamed, naturally. Who wouldn't be terrified of such a thing? It didn't help that the stressful events of their past hours lost in space had frayed their nerves and jumbled their minds, driving them nuts and preventing them from thinking straight. They scrambled to fly out of the way, scattering themselves before they could get swallowed whole.
"Guys, that thing is hunting us," Lance grimly concluded, watching as the creature shifted to circle back around. "It's gonna get us all unless we do something!"
"Like what?" Allura pressed. "We can't even use our bayards."
"How did you manifest yours, Hunk?" Pidge asked.
"I don't know," he admitted. "I just knew that I needed to."
"What are we gonna do? We don't stand a chance!" Lance lamented, the despair threatening to return.
Hunk didn't reply right away. But when he did, he was boosting himself right towards the creature trying to kill them. "Get out of here!" he ordered them, his expression set with an unshakable determination. "I'll buy you some time. Go!"
"Hunk!"
"No!"
"Hunk!"
He was screaming, firing relentlessly at the beast before him. It did absolutely no damage, but its attention was locked on him, just as he'd hoped. The thing roared, jaws opened wide to snap him up, but it never got the chance. Forming a chain, they grabbed Hunk, stopping him from following through with his suicide mission.
Always consider the lives of your teammates and civilians before your own.
"What are you doing?" he exclaimed.
"Fire jetpacks!" Pidge yelled.
Keith, at the end of their line, swiftly did so. They were all abruptly yanked backwards, just narrowly escaping being gobbled up by the monster. When they all brought themselves to a halt, they hovered around Hunk.
"What are you guys doing?" he asked again, and he almost sounded mad at them. "I told you to escape!"
Lance frowned at him. "Why would we ever do that without you?"
"Yeah. You can't expect us to just leave you," Pidge agreed, as if this should have been obvious.
"We're a team, Hunk. We have to stick together like you said," Allura reminded him, before casting a hesitant glance Keith's way. There was an apologetic gleam in her eyes, her brow furrowed with guilt and a flurry of unspoken words and feelings.
Keith's own regret was welling inside him in full now. He couldn't believe he'd lost his nerve like that, snapping at everyone, yelling at them, thinking and saying such awful things that weren't even close to being true. He'd almost made Hunk, brave and kind and shining so bright in even the darkest of times, do something he could never take back. Keith was still their leader. They trusted him and looked to him for guidance. They didn't want him to leave, nor did he want to be apart from them. He had to keep calm for their sakes, to make sure their hope never died out. And they would always be there for him to make sure he didn't lose himself either.
"I'm sorry I said those hurtful things earlier. I was wrong," Keith said finally, suddenly feeling very small beneath their watchful gazes. But this needed to be said, and he meant every word with his entire heart and soul. "This series of messed up coincidences did happen for a reason. They brought us together as paladins. But more importantly they brought us together as friends."
He mustered a small but sincere smile, and he was glad to receive four in return. A familiar energy pulsed through them, and the roaring of lions echoed faintly inside their minds as the invisible thread tying them all together seemed to reinforce itself infinitely. Grabbing their bayards, their respective weapons appeared in their hands. With five ready to fight as one, they surged forward to face the beast.
"All right, team. We have to attack this thing with our bayards from every side possible," Keith instructed them, hashing out a quick plan on the spot. "That way it can't target us all at once."
"Yeah!" the others chorused, their resolve unified and unbreakable.
Keith still didn't know how just the five of them would take down this thing, small as they were. At most, they might be able to scare it away or make it lose interest. But at least they were working together now and no longer at each other's throats. They would survive this, just as they always did in such impossible situations. They would all get through this.
They besieged the creature with the firepower of their bayards, ducking and weaving and gliding to safety to avoid its hungry mouth and swishing tail. But no matter what they tried, the thing was just too big for them to handle on their own.
"It's toying with us," Allura huffed as they regrouped.
Lance grit his teeth, shouting furiously and unleashing a string of blasts upon the creature's eye. The blue beams uselessly pinged off its tough skin, and the beast shrieked as it turned on them once more to snap them up.
Suddenly, a brilliant beam of energy slammed into the thing's head with a rattling explosion that sent it ducking away. Surprised, the five of them turned to face the source of this unexpected attack, and they were immediately greeted by the Red Lion, with the remaining lions right on its tail. Yellow and Blue landed their own hits, eliciting furious screams from the creature. Then Black let out a ferocious roar that was chilling enough to send the thing running. Fleeing from the protective force that was the Voltron lions, it disappeared into the depths of space, never to bother them again.
"Yeah, you better run!" Lance called out after it, a satisfied smirk stretching out across his face.
"I think he might actually be running from that!" Pidge cried out, and the resurgence of fear in her voice drew their gazes behind them to where she was pointing. In the distance, the strange energy pulse that had thrown them all into this mess in the first place had returned, and it was fast approaching.
"Again?" Hunk squeaked.
"We know we can't outrun it," Allura said, uneasy and restless in the face of their next predicament.
Black's growl rumbled softly in Keith's ear, and he glanced up at the lions hovering over them. They had reforged their bond as paladins and had even been able to call their lions to them. They were stronger than ever now, and he had a good feeling they'd be able to handle this strange energy pulse just fine.
"We're not running this time," he decided, and everyone promptly boarded their lions.
The friends they'd left in the cockpits were still there, frozen but stable, much to his relief. Now it was time to get all of them out of here. The fire within him burning hotter and hotter by the second, Keith gripped his controls, ready to go.
"Form Voltron!"
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