Pidge

"Great…now what do I do?" Pidge's first impulse had been to consider working on the pod, after all if she could get it up and working maybe there was a chance to get a frequency back to the castle. She pushed up her visor and started to fiddle with the internal engine and systems, after pushing up the hood of the pod and bending over to hook up her cables. Once they were in place she started to calibrate the system, running checks to see what was causing the interference: the weird wavelength she flew through (which she honestly thought was the cause) or the blast she'd taken by the fighter that had vanished over the horizon.

"Either way, it's going to be hard to work with, with all this moisture," she bemoaned to herself as she watched the numbers and waves flicker on the table she held. A frown came over her face as she sat beside the wreck. "Maybe if I shift the modules around it could help the system run better and then convert the code to something a bit simpler it could get through…"

Her fingers flew across the screen, looking for any way to convert what she knew of Altean language to regular script, after all numbers were numbers, but her knowledge wasn't perfect yet, and while she understood some of what the symbols before her meant she wasn't sure of them all, and Coran wasn't there to help her figure it out. Pidge sighed, and grumbled, she should have studied harder on her off time, but at least she had the computer on her arm to help her figure things out. It held the schematic of the pod, and that was a huge advantage to her at the moment.

Her thoughts were buried deep in her work so she wasn't paying much attention to the world around her. Noises blurred, came and went, and she figured out that most were just animals hopping around the trees. If she stayed away from them, they wouldn't bother her, and if anything that she couldn't handle came by, she'd just duck into the pod and stay there until it left. At least that had been her plan, that changed however when she picked up the sound of something buzzing in the distance and then the sound of crashing not even a hundred feet from where she was downed.

Sitting up she listened carefully and decided to move a bit closer to where the noise was coming from. Pidge hated to leave her work, but she knew that the diagnostic would take a while to run, and it was better to know what she was going to be dealing with then get jumped by surprise; so she gathered up her gear, dumped it into the cockpit, and locked the pod as best she could, covering it with some broken branches for camouflage, before heading out to find out what was making all the racket.

She used her bayard to get around faster, lifting her up from branch to branch and scanning the area. Again she heard the noise and at around fifty feet from the pod crash she called out, "Is someone there?! Can you hear me?"

A shout came back, "Help! Oh is someone there! Please help me!"

Pidge didn't need a second thought, she followed the pleas for help, and raced along the forests upper branches, keeping a look out for the owner.

"Hey can you hear me?" she shouted out, and while there was no response to the question, she did hear the calls for help getting louder and more direct.

"Please, if anyone is there! I need help! Please, they'll kill me!"

"I'm on my way! Hold on!" she cried out as she scanned the area. She was sure she had gone in the right direction. The voice was screaming out in pain and it was horrible to hear. Pidge gritted her teeth as she lowered herself down to a lower branch so she could see better and gasped when she saw a group about ten Galra solider robots attacking a single man dressed in what looked like rags to her.

No way, no way, no way, she thought to herself as got closer to the scene. She was right above them and shouted at the group, through gritted teeth, "Hey! Leave him alone!"

Pidge dove at the robots, swinging ala Tarzan, yelling the famous yell as she did so and slamming her feet into one of the robot's heads, causing it to twist around and tumble into another. With two down she descended onto the floor of the forest, slashing at one of the robots, who had turned to see what had caused the issue for the other two. The robot fizzled then exploded some, sending bits flying. This made another turn to fire on her, only for Pidge to dive out of the way and the fire to hit the shooters partner who was next to it.

This confused the other bots, which pidge used to her advantage and shot her grappling hook around another tree. Then let out a whistle, which caught the robots attention. They ran towards the sound, causing three of them to fall on top of one another and become a tangled mess. Pidge jumped on to the back of the top of the pile and pulled herself up onto another branch, nearly losing her balance as the remaining three robots returned fire.

"Whoa," she yelped, catching herself and finding cover behind the trunk. Thinking quickly she noticed a tree branch that was loose not too far from where she was. A plan formulated, and she raised her brow. Well as Lance says, there's merit in cartoons. And she went for the opposite tree. Avoiding the blasts as best she could, Pidge landed on the branch beside the lose one. The motion caused the robots to follow after and soon enough they were poised right under the branch firing up. Taking a breath Pidge lunged out from her hiding place and sliced then kicked at the branch. With three well timed strikes of her foot and bayard the whole branch collapsed from the tree and smashed down into the three remaining robots, sending sparks flying from the ensuing explosion.

"Not good," she muttered as she lowered herself to the ground. Someone's bound to have heard that.

Moving cautiously, but quickly, she made her way over to the injured party, a lone male that was dressed in what looked like a really dirty set of off white pants and a short sleeved kimono shirt. The man had on no shoes, and looked like he had been through a lot. His hair though was clean, or mostly clean, and pulled back from his young face. He was breathing hard and slow, his eyes closed, or at least they seemed slightly closed.

Pidge reached a gloved hand touched his shoulder and the young man looked up at her with a pair of scared brown eyes. She was worried, he wasn't in good shape at all, and she wasn't a medical person, only knowing what her mother had shown her in dressing cuts and such from her work as a nurse at home. This was more than a minor burn and some bad cuts from a fist fight.

"Are you okay? Uh…Hello?" she asked, not knowing if he could understand or not. Pidge held out her hand to him, hoping that the gesture would convey a friendly attitude. The translator in the helmet normally worked but there was always a chance that in ten thousand years there could be a new language or two that had been developed that it didn't recognize. Still it was worth the chance given his condition. The young man looked at her oddly for a moment, as if trying to understand something, or debate something, and then he slowly sat up and took her outstretched hand and then looked at it.

Pidge stood there nervous as his eyes took in her whole form, it made her feel weird, as if he was sizing her up so she tried to remain as calm and confident as possible, like Shiro, Keith, lance and Hunk managed to when they were under pressure. For whatever reason that seemed to work, because he seemed to relax after a moment or so.

"Ah, yes, thank you miss…" he started to say, when Pidge watched as he doubled over from what she had to assume was a lot of pain, and he passed out in her arms to her utter shock. Pidge caught him as he slumped and realized he was heavier then he looked.

"Hey, hold on a minute, can you at least stand for me?" she asked as she tried to pull him to his feet. It was a no go as he seemed to lean heavily on her. She sighed and wrapped her arms around his chest under his arms, pulling him slowly along the floor, trying not to leave a trail. "I guess the answer is no."

"You know, you're kind of heavy," Pidge said to herself as she walked, hauling the sleeping man along with her. "Of course you are, you're dead weight at the moment. Wonder where you're from and who you are? Well you're not gonna answer in this state."

Again she sighed as she dragged him all the way back to the pod where she laid him down next to the ship. Pidge took off her helmet and sighed, the man had not moved and she leaned over to check his pulse on his neck, he seemed to have a human form so she assumed that he probably had some similar physiology like an earth human.

"Although with my luck he'll turn out to be a Galifrian and have two hearts or something." She muttered as she felt for a heartbeat. Thankfully one showed up and she let out a breath that she didn't know she had been holding.

Crouching down she leaned against the ship and thought a moment as she looked over his form. There was bruising on his face from hitting into something, cuts from where he'd probably hit the ground from a fall of some sort, bruising on his arms and a slight burn from a blaster bolt hitting him in the leg. Pidge rubbed her head as she put on her glasses. Was there enough supplies to help him, or not? And if there was, then what about if she got hurt? Could she waste them on a guy that she didn't know or trust?

Pidge closed her eyes and put her head in her arms as she sunk to the ground, her knees pulled up to her chest, "What am I gonna do with you? I'm not sure if I have enough supplies to help you out."

"Mezragor leaves," she heard him mutter and she looked up to see the young man, who was sweating now, muttering with his face up to the sky.

"What?" she asked and he repeated it.

"Mezragor leaves. They grow…on the trees here. They can make…something to sooth, a burn. Please…can you get some?"

"Of course!" Pidge said getting up right away, then paused. "So what do they look like and where can I find them?"

The strange young man weakly pointed with his finger at some smaller palm like trees. "There, those are Mezragor trees. You're going to want the smaller leaves at the bottom, the larger ones are way to strong and will knock me out."

"So it will help your leg?" she asked and he nodded. "Good enough for me."

Putting her helmet back on Pidge grappled up towards the tree that the stranger had pointed too, and found herself quickly surrounded by a tranquility that she'd only felt when alone atop the garrison with her machines. Mezora was turning out to be a rather calm place, "Minus the whole being shot down and killer robots on the loose."

Not wanting to take too long and leave the stranger alone with her pod, Pidge gathered a collection of smaller leaves and headed back to the crash site. The stranger had not moved, and was resting again, very stiffly. She gently nudged him with her foot as she held the leaves, and he looked up. "Hey I have them, now tell me what to do."

The young stranger turned his head to her, "Take them and smash them up, you want to make them a paste, so add little bits of water until they're like dough or cream or…"

"Oatmeal?" she asked him quizzically and he blinked.

"What is that?"

"It's a pasty breakfast food that we eat where I'm from," she said as she rummaged around for something to collect the cut up pieces of leaves. Pulling out a bowl and a piece of metal that had fallen off, she used her bayard to create a knife and started to cut the leaves then put them in the bowl.

"And where is that?" he asked curiously.

"Ah, no where you know of." She said and glanced over at him. "Do you have a name? I'm Pidge."

"Pidge? Like a bird?" he asked and then chuckled, "That's an odd name for a girl."

"Yeah…" she stared and then stared. "How do you know I'm a girl?"

Again he seemed to find something amusing and Pidge raised an eyebrow, "You're voice, the way your face looks, you're eyes. You have the voice of someone female."

"No I don't," she said quickly and again he laughed.

"Yes you do, but no matter, if you like to pretend you're a guy then that's fine with me. I don't care at the moment Paladin."

This made her pause again and she held the knife out to him, "Okay talk, who are you?"

"Can you help me first, please?" he asked in a kinder tone and she lowered her gaze. He sighed, "I assure you, Pidge, I mean no harm to you. I've heard of Voltron before, there are legends in my worlds lore of the Paladins of old."

"Paladins of old?" she inquired as she went back to cutting. He nodded slowly. "Like what?"

"It's hard to think with the pain, miss."

"Sorry, right, you got shot. Why…why were you running from those robots?" She put the chopped leaves into the bowl and got a small amount of water from the pod and poured it in. Then started to mash the mix together until a paste started to form.

The stranger struggled to form words, his eyes kept closing. Pidge sighed, there would be no way to get info out of him until he could talk normally, and it was clear that he was having a hard time at the moment dealing with the wounds he had.

"So I put this on your bruising and cuts and the blast right?"

"Yes, that's right." He still had his eyes closed and had not moved. Pidge reached over and dipped her fingers into the bowl with her gloved hand and started to smear it on his face. He didn't seem to mind it but it wasn't spreading right, and she grunted softly. "This isn't going to work, hold on."

A second later her gloves came off and she used her fingers to spread the paste over his wounds. His skin felt weird, slightly cold, but also a bit off. As if there was some sort of film over his face. She assumed it was a form of perspiration, but wasn't about to ask as it wasn't her place at the moment. Still the whole thing felt a bit awkward at first, he was someone she didn't know and she was fixing him up. The whole situation reminded her of the weird romance novels that her mother would read from time to time, which normally made her roll her eyes.

"Done," she said when she had him covered, but there was no response, he'd gone to sleep. Pidge sighed and shook her head. "Well at least this should help you right? I guess back to work."

She got up and shuffled back over to the ship, pulling out the tablet and cables and went back to trying to fix what she understood how to. Ships she got, guys was a whole different issue entirely.