Chapter 5: A Spark of Hope

A/N: I do not own Voltron: Legendary Defender.

I just own Ziera, Colran, Sephiras, Janze and any other OCs mentioned in this fic that isn't canon.

WARNING: Contains violence, death, implications of sexual acts, Lance's flirting, and other things that may cause some readers discomfort.

Hey guys, I finally finished chapter 5 of this story! That means I can start planning the next five chapters! Since this takes place halfway through season 2, it'll be a little while before Lotor is introduced, but until then, I'll make sure to add more content about Ziera and her past to make up for the wait!

Anyway, enjoy!

The sight that met Ziera was not one she was expecting, though, at this point in time, she was starting to believe this was the norm for everyone aboard. Coran was clinging to one of the large consoles next to the wormhole generator, trying to keep himself stood upright as his feet slid backward, stretching his body out as far as it would go until he was only clinging to the floor by the scrunched tips of his toes.

The motion of the Tylyrion female lifting her hand to scratch her cheek awkwardly caught the flamboyant man's attention, and his eyes snapped to her's, wide in silent panic. "Oh!" He exclaimed, his tone an octave higher than it should have been. "Ziera, what're you doing here?"

Ziera dropped her hand and let out a slightly sheepish laugh, stepping around the slimy puddles to close the door behind her. "The princess sent me. Since I'm new and don't really know what else I can do, and have the most experience with engineering out of the group, she thought I'd be a good help to you."

"That's just like Allura." Coran finally managed to regain his slippery footing and stood up, only to flail for a second and catch himself, pretending he was just resting his elbow on the console, which Ziera was not falling for in the slightest. He was not the smoothest of liars. "She always finds a way to consider others, even when she should be worrying about herself first..." His expression went from embarrassed to serious as Ziera hummed in response. "Listen...I'm sorry about how she acted before...She's been through a lot and because of that, she doesn't trust anything that could be linked to the Galra...She didn't mean any harm, and I'm sure she'll come around...Eventually."

Ziera's curious pout turned to a solemn smile and she sighed, looking at the console as if inspecting it, so she could avert her gaze naturally. "It's alright, Coran...I understand why she wouldn't trust me...But, I think we're making progress, and I'm willing to be patient if that's what it takes to convince her."

The two shared an understanding, polite smile, grateful for the other's words before the softer conversation shifted to more pressing matters. "Right, if you're serious about helping, could you go to that monitor there and make sure the power levels throughout the ship stay stable while I shift some of the energy from the smaller systems into the Teladuv?"

"No problem!" The feline engineer stated, turning to the console and looking it over. Though she grimaced at the sight of the sweat covering the machines, she grasped the surface eagerly, excited to explore the castle systems, like the tech nut she was. However, though she was expecting to be able to get straight to work, instead she could only stare blankly as sweat slid down her cheek when she noticed that everything was written in Altean and she could not understand a single word of it. "Uh, Coran?"

"Hm, yes, what is it?" Coran asked hastily without looking back, sliding clumsily from one machine to another as he started siphoning power.

Just before the blue-haired technician could ask where the translations were located, the entire ship shook, causing them both to hold on for dear life as red lights flashed through the room and warning alarms blared. "What in Quiznack is going on now?!" The Altean gentleman cried out with elevated stress etched into his voice.

Ziera awkwardly pressed a button on the console and almost beamed when she saw the castle diagnostics appear. That was lucky! "It looks like the particle barrier's been activated!"

It was then that Coran looked up just as a large screen appeared, showing everyone on the bridge at their designated stations. "Coran, Ziera, are you there?" Came the voice of the princess, standing at her usual station, still exhausted, but ready to fight if necessary.

"I'm here!" Coran called out as the shaking made him slip and slide all over the place. Ziera absent-mindedly waved to prove she was still alive as Coran slid past the screen again. "Over here, whoa~!"

"Zarkon's back!" The princess stated sharply, this made Ziera and Coran both freeze in place, well, Coran was rigid during his skating escapades, as he could not fully stop. "What's the status?!"

"Wormholing would be a problem," Coran told her, grabbing the system where the com was, pulling himself forward as he finally managed to remain steady for the time being. "The lenses haven't been readjusted, I don't know if the Teladuv will generate enough power!"

"Do everything you can!"

"Princess!" Ziera called out, turning around to address her teammates. "Is there a way to translate the Altean scripture in the systems to my home language? I have some ideas, but I can't access anything when I can't read it!"

"I can set it up for you from here...!" Allura started, her fingers moving quickly on the floating monitor perched in front of her. "Do whatever you can to get this ship as far away from Zarkon as possible!"

"I won't let you down!" The engineer stated as everything on her screen finally shifted and phased into a different scripture altogether, which made her smile brightly as she began typing at long last. "Give me a little time!"

"Alright, keep us posted!" Shiro called out before the com went dead and the two were left to work around the tremors and alarms that blared throughout the room.

"Ziera, can you pull power to the turbines, if we're going to even attempt a jump, we need to make sure the Teladuv can take it!" Coran asked while he slid into the generator to assess the damage to the lenses himself.

"Already on it!" Ziera called back, typing so quickly, any normal person would have gotten a cramp. Luckily, like the Olkari, the Tylyrion race were natural technicians, though some cultivated the talent more than others as she had herself.

"It's going to be a bumpy ride!" Coran exclaimed as he skated back over to the monitor and typed at a similar speed to his newest ally. "With a few adjustments, I can get the turbine up and running once again, then I can start adjusting the Telduv's laser trajectory."

"Do what you need to do! Anything's better than staying here with Zarkon's fleet!"

"I can't argue with you there...That's it!" The older Altean quickly finished his coding and slammed a finger down on the com button, opening a channel to the bridge. However, he lost his footing and began sliding around once again. "The turbine's up!" He informed them, despite his terrible footing. "Still working on the-aaaah!"

Suddenly his feet lost their purchase and he couldn't keep his balance, landing on his rear before falling forward and spinning around to a stop. "Are you alright, Coran?" Ziera asked, glancing from the screen to the man on the floor behind her, it took a lot of effort to keep the power balanced throughout the castle.

"Uh, guys..." He started, crying comically. "I think I'm realizing now that I do, infact, have a case of the Slipperies..." He managed to get up, and the look on each of the other passengers faces would have made Ziera laugh if she had been given the chance to look over her shoulder. "I'm sorry I yelled at you Pidge, I may need your help afterall."

"I'm coming down!" Pidge stated, quickly scrambling from her seat as the com shut down, leaving them to their devices. After a moment, the short brunette stumbled into the room. "What can I do?"

"Help Ziera divert power!" Coran ordered, and Pidge did just that, running to the monitor at Ziera's side and typing rapidly. However, she was not there for long. "Slide me to that monitor!" Immediately the young paladin dropped what she was doing and pushed the older gentleman towards the machine to his right. "Wipe my sweat!" And finally, she rushed around his sides, using a towel to clean the slick sweat from his skin and clothes.

"Uh, Pidge, you might want to contact the bridge and tell them the drones will be going offline, I need to divert more power, but there are only so many systems left that I can siphon it from!"

"Got it!" Pidge pressed the com button just as the red, blue and black paladins' drones shut down, and Keith started to investigate the cause, wondering out-loud if there was a system failure. "Nope, that was us!" She called out, surprising them as Coran slipped back and forth out of camera shot behind her.

"We needed to divert power from non-essential systems to the Teladuv to bring it back online!" Ziera started, glancing over her shoulder at them.

Lance did not like that response and stood up, clenching his fist. "Shooting bad guys is pretty essential!"

"Not inside a wormhole, it isn't!"

"Uh guys, are you taking power from other places too?" Hunk asked nervously as he looked over his screens.

"Yes, sorry, they'll be put back online once we're safe!"

"Uh, we've lost secondary controls...Thermal regulator's offline! Oh no, there goes the particle barrier!" Hunk was having a full-blown fear meltdown at this point, sweating bullets as he tried to keep an eye on the systems through his blurry, tired eyes.

However, with those last few systems offline, Coran pulled the lever upwards for the Teladuv and it lit up, now ready for use. "Okay, try it! We should be able to make one, very small, jump!" The mechanic hesitated and looked down slightly. "I hope."

Ziera spun around and watched as the Teladuv door closed and the monitor switched to a view of the inside chamber, while still connected via voice to the bridge. "Is it gonna hold?" Pidge asked.

"I guess we're about to find out!"

The monitor turned white with a bright light, and Shiro's voice echoed through the room. "The wormhole's open!" But, only after slipping inside and being safe from danger for a few moments, cracks and shattering crashes were heard inside the Teladuv chamber, and the light that once filled the screen died down into nothing.

"Oh no!" Coran cried out. "The lenses are breaking down even more...We'll be out of the wormhole even sooner this time!"

And they were, as the end of the wormhole appeared and they slipped out and into the realms of deep space once again, floating by a large storm on a nearby planet. For a second, they had breathing room, but none of them thought it would last long, so they all just relaxed there, tired from the work.

However, Ziera didn't stop working, her eyes darting from diagram to diagram as her fingers started to cramp from the insane typing she was doing. Now that the lenses were cracking, even more, it was unlikely they could make a third jump, so she decided to take this time to find a way to enable one final escape, should they need to do so.

The com opened up after a few moments, having closed once the wormhole had been activated. "Coran." Shiro started, arching a brow when he saw Pidge and Ziera working hard, while the eldest Altean merely skated around the room on his own sweat like a professional figure skater. "Any good news?"

"Actually there is a bit of good news!" He stated, doing a twirl. "I'm finally getting used to these Slipperies! My mucus glands are working at an incredible rate."

Shiro sweatdropped. "Any news about the Teladuv?" He clarified.

"I'm afraid not..." Coran's tone turned solemn as he stopped. "The last jump overloaded the lense stones, now even more of them are broken...We're going to try some readjustments to change the beam directory." He skated backward and halted at the monitor beside Ziera. "Until then, wormholing will be impossible..."

"Actually..." Ziera started, not taking her eyes from the screen as she kept working, she was already implementing her idea. "I think I know a way we can manage one final jump should we need it!"

"Really?" Pidge and Coran asked, looking at her with dropped jaws, she had not said a word so far towards this, so it came as a surprise.

"Yes!" Her serious frown turned into a bright, confident smile as her eyes lit up over her idea. "If we adjust the mechanical aspects of the Teladuv to make a full jump without the need for an overwhelming level of power..." She glanced at the communication screen, determination radiating off her. "We can push the lenses for one last full jump." She hesitated then. "But...To do that, we'd need to shift the power of the Teladuv to several smaller systems, potentially overloading them and causing them to fail in the process."

"Oh!" Pidge exclaimed, getting the same idea in her head as she opened up her own system directory and began to read off the lesser power units that could be used. "That makes sense! All the excess power for the jump wouldn't overload the Teladuv, though, it will damage a lot more of the lenses...It's risky, but if we divert the overload into the lights and the food dispenser, we should be able to pull it off." She glanced away, knowing what was going to happen once she said her next sentence. "Even though we'd have to do without those systems for about a week or two..."

"I vote we find another solution!" Hunk called out, raising his hand while everyone else gave him an exasperated look. "What? Food's important, we can't go without food for a week!"

"Oh, but we can!" Coran said, moving around even more effortlessly now, as he too began to catch on to the idea and implemented the steps, skidding over to the main mechanical station and opening the hatch, sliding inside to start making the physical changes to the engineering of the Teladuv lenses. "This might just work if we do it right!"

Ziera grinned with a swell of pride when she heard how much they liked her idea, and while Pidge used the other monitor to connect the Teladuv's power source to the other systems, she began the long process of changing the machine's code to allow for less power. "Hey." Pidge piped up as an image appeared, a warning for a nearby weather phenomenon. "There's a metallic storm ahead of us. I think we can hide in the eye of the storm!" While she spoke, Allura brought up the information on the larger screen so they could all read it. "It should give off enough electrical interference, so we can't be tracked!"

"It's worth a shot," Shiro stated, thanking Pidge for her input as Allura flew the castle into the storm's eye, where it was safe from the swirling debris, and hopefully, Zarkon's tracking. Though the ship was shaking violently, and that was not good for Hunk's stomach.

Allura's expression went from tense and fearful, to relaxed and rather elated as she typed on her holographic monitor. "Brilliant Pidge!" She started. "We're essentially invisible to any radar, radio waves, universal scans, or any other known technologies!"

Ziera paused in her programming and spun around to face the communicator. "Wait, Princess...If that's the case, then I can prove my loyalty!" Everyone went silent and looked towards the feline as she placed her hand on her chest. "Should Zarkon appear again, Divine Beings forbid, then I cannot be a spy, as I would have no means of communicating with him!"

Allura paused, shoulders sagging with relief when she realized that Ziera's words spoke true. If they remained hidden in the storm, her goggles, or any other devices would be rendered useless, if Zarkon did appear, she would have no part in it. "I-" She started, only to be cut off when the red alarms started blaring, and above them, looming over their only escape, was Zarkon's ship, yet again. The Princess' eyes widened as her thought trailed away, and the only word she could speak, was 'no' in a soft, horrified whisper.

Ziera's screen flashed an image of Zarkon's ship around the alarms and she let out a sharp hiss, tangling her fingers into her hair. "You're making it so much easier to hate you, Zarkon!" She snapped, this being the first time she had lost her cool around the paladins. Though she hated the fact that they could not get a break from that dictator, she was also elated to have been proven right.

She could not be a spy, she was finally proven innocent!

Releasing the grip she had on her now messy hair, Ziera went back to her coding, feeling her fingers ache as she pushed herself to type even faster than she did before.

They did not have time to waste!

Pidge slammed her small fist on the monitor, speaking with slight panic. "Okay, I don't know how he found us, but it definitely wasn't with normal instruments!"

Silence echoed for a moment as everyone tried to figure out how he could be tracking them. If normal instruments couldn't be tracked, then that meant all their technology and even the crystal powering the castle couldn't be located outside of the storm. That's when something clicked in Ziera's mind and she looked at her crystal, gripping it tightly, wondering if it could be the cause of all this. She quickly shook the thought from her mind. 'No, that doesn't make any sense!" However, now that her mind was reeling with the thought, she began to second-guess it all.

This crystal was not a Balmera given one, but a Galra extracted one, therefore the frequency it radiated would differ too, right? If her theory was correct then the Quintessence it contained would differ greatly from its pure counterparts as well... Could that mad dictator have found a way to track the Quintessence in the crystal, rather than the technology it could power?

Before she could even confirm her own suspicions, Allura's voice echoed through the room. "It's me...!" Everyone paused and turned to face her, shocked and confused by her simple words, as she looked up at them. "It's been me all along. That's how they found us on Planet Arus!"

Suddenly a tremor shook the castle, larger than the ones the storm caused, and everyone looked outside, well all those on the bridge, to see thousands of Galra Fighters flying towards them, lasers lighting up the vast space as each and every ship fired at the larger castle in the center of the hurricane.

"It doesn't matter Princess!" Shiro chimed in, despite the emergency. "We're in this together, we're gonna get out together!"

Though he sounded confident, no one else was. "Uh, how?" Hunk asked. "We're trapped!"

"We'll form Voltron and go through the storm!"

Lance quickly stood from his seat, eyes wider than they should have been. "The storm? What, are you nuts?!"

"Yeah!" Hunk started, standing as well, arms outstretched as if to emphasis the stupidity of the plan. "What are you-what is it-what do you mean? Yeah, why would we do that?!"

"It's risky, I know," Shiro exclaimed, turning to face them all. "But it's our only chance! We have to go through the storm, and lure Zarkon's ship away, giving Allura enough time to get into open space!"

Allura knew Shiro's plan was flawed, but at the same time, she trusted the man she chose to be the Black Paladin. "Then what?"

"Then we wormhole away!" He spun around and addressed the people in the engine room. "Pidge, can you get back up here, we need you to help us form Voltron!"

"On it!" Pidge was quick to run out of the frame and from the room.

"Ziera!"

The feline space-traveler hummed and glanced over her shoulder, still typing as she addressed Shiro. "What do you need?"

"How long until the Teladuv is ready to power up?"

"I just need a few more minutes!" She warned, sweat sliding down her dark, patterned cheek as she felt the stress of the situation sit on her shoulders. "With Pidge gone, I'm rather short-staffed, the software is rather delicate and needs fine-tuning to perfection, otherwise the entire ship could ignite from the surge of power it may cause!" She frowned and Coran's expression mimicked her own. However, she took a deep breath and shot the leader of the paladins a confident glare. "But I will make it work, trust me to do that while you take care of Zarkon's fleet!"

"Got it, we'll buy you all the time you need, do what you can!"

With those words, the bridge's communicator shut down, leaving the technician and the mechanic to do their work. He was still beneath the console, tinkering with the machine to ensure there was a circuit leading the excess power to other systems, while Ziera was silent, sweat dripping from her chin as the sound of furious typing filled the small room.

It was broken when the screen switched back on yet again, Allura stood in the bridge on her own, while the paladins did their bit to distract Zarkon. "How's it coming along, Ziera?"

"I've managed to lower the power each lense stone would need to endure to about three beams worth of energy!" She started, glancing over at the screen, her eyes shining with confidence, she was certain this would work, given just a few more minutes. "But even then, if we use the Teladuv, the already cracked lenses will disintegrate completely, and any that sustained no damage the last two times will crack as well..."

"Will we still be able to wormhole completely?" Allura asked.

The female feline paused as she turned to face the screen completely, only for a large grin to spread across her once-serious features. "Without a doubt!" She stated with a dripping confidence in her tone. "I will enable the system to make a full jump, even if it means I swear off meals for a week!"

Allura's own tense expression softened with a light, grateful smile. "Wonderful!" She then positioned herself for a bumpy ride as Zarkon's ship started to move away from the eye of the storm, chasing Voltron. "Alright, here we go!"

With those words, Ziera and Coran held onto whatever surface they could with one hand, while they worked with the other, feeling the ship move as it started to fly out of the storm. After a second, Allura spoke again. "Oh no!"

"What's the matter, Princess?" Coran called out.

"Zarkon's ship immobilized Voltron! We have to help them escape!"

"Give me just a tick, I need to relocate some power to the lasers first!"

"Please hurry, Coran!"

After a second of Coran's tinkering, and Ziera's assistance in the software side of the act, the man's voice boomed. "Alright, that should do it! Rain hell on them!"

"You don't have to tell me twice!" They assumed Allura did just that, considering the silence that followed for a second before she shouted into a different communicator. "Paladins now's your chance! Get out of there!"

Ziera could see the coding coming to an end, and her skin tingled with adrenaline, she had never been so on edge before in her life...No, this adrenaline was familiar, a fear she understood, but couldn't remember.

Had she been in a situation similar to this one, or maybe even one that was worse than this?

Her thoughts were interrupted. "Coran, Ziera, the lions have returned to the castle, we need to go, now!"

"Alright, that should be..." Ziera slammed her finger down on the final button, and the door to the Teladuv slid shut, warning lights flashing on either side of the sealed door. "There! Princess, make the jump!"

"Brilliant! Hold on tight." The communicator went offline and the entire ship began to shake as it entered the wormhole, making a full, if not unstable, jump into clear space. After a second, the tremors stopped and as if on cue, all the lights exploded from the overloaded power supply. Ziera sighed with relief, dropping to her knees, only to grimace when she realized she had just landed in a puddle of Coran's sweat.

Despite that, she smiled. Now she was completely exhausted, coding took a lot of mental strain.

She hummed and looked to the side as the door to the Teladuv opened and Coran skated over, having slipped out of his place under the mechanism, everything set back to how it was. He grabbed the side of the door to halt his journey, and looked into the Teladuv's chamber. "Oh, Quiznak..." He whined.

"What is it?" Ziera asked.

"You were right about that last jump destroying the lense stones...Now we're going to need to find somewhere that sells or makes the very rare Scaultrite lense stones that the Teladuv needs."

"Wait..." A voice echoed through the room as the screen flickered on and Pidge's face appeared. "Did you say Scaultrite?"

"Yes, why?"

"I think Hunk was making some terrible cookies with that stuff!" Hunk's growl of disapproval echoed in the channel. "We should gather them up and see if they can be used in an emergency!"

Twenty minutes or so later, Hunk and Pidge rushed into the room carrying the trays of Scaultrite cookies. Coran was quick to pick one up, humming with a jutted lip as his eyes narrowed and he stroked his chin, inspecting the hazardous snack. "Amazing, it appears these terrible cookies do have traces of Scaultrite in them!"

"Do you have to call them terrible?" Hunk complained, while Ziera, who stood behind him, giggled.

"With these, we have the resources to make one final jump in an emergency!"

Ziera chimed in, raising one finger. "Though, they'll probably only hold for one jump, if it's only a trace of the necessary material."

The communicator screen lit up and Allura's smiling face appeared on the other side, the other Paladins letting out little yawns in the background. "Coran, Ziera..." She started, watching as the two turned to face her. "It's thanks to you both that we were able to escape, not only that, your quick thinking saved us from using a valuable resource!"

Ziera smiled brightly, glad to have finally gotten on Allura's good side, while Hunk patted her shoulder with a grateful smile of his own, and Pidge shot Coran a thumbs-up, which he reciprocated. "There's no need to thank me, Princess." The feline stated, letting out a tired yawn, fangs gleaming in the blue light of the room as she tried to hide it behind her clawed hand. "Though I must say, now I am officially exhausted~!"

The screen widened to show the entire bridge, where Lance and Keith were trying not to fall asleep on their chairs. Shiro was the one to speak. "We still don't know if Zarkon will reappear at any moment, but while we have the time, we should all get some rest...Any more than this, and we won't be able to make rational decisions in alarming situations."

"Can't argue with you there..." Pidge agreed, yawning herself as she and the three other occupants of the engine room finally made their leave for a well-deserved rest.

~BHBL~

Ziera was sat in her room, laying on her bed as she snuggled into the blanket, purring contently as she felt herself drifting towards a 'cat nap' as the humans called it. However just as her mind was about to go blank, there was a bleeping at her door, indicating a visitor. She sluggishly opened her tired eyes and glared at the metal barrier, willing it to shut up so she could sleep.

However, knowing she would not forgive herself for ignoring a visitor, she stretched with a cat-like yawn and got out of bed, slipping into her usual space-suit before she walked over to the door and pressed open the lock, allowing it to automatically open when it sensed a person or creature nearby.

On the other side of the door, was the young female of the group. "Oh, Pidge!" Ziera started, wiping her eyes with the back of her glove-less hand, her tail flicking around behind her. "I'm surprised to see you here, weren't you going to rest?"

"Yeah, but I wanted to come by and say something first." Pidge started, smiling up at the older woman. "Thanks for all your help with that whole Zarkon thing...It was a really cool idea to change the power input to other systems to lessen the load on the wormholer, and I wanted to know if it'd be okay if I could pick your brain at some point?"

"Pick my brain? Isn't that rather barbaric?"

Pidge sweatdropped and almost fell over. "N-no, it's a saying on Earth. It means I want to talk to you about ideas for new inventions!"

"Oh!" Ziera's once confused and concerned features lit up excitedly. "I'd be more than happy to spend some time inventing with you! Perhaps that'll help me remember a little more about my previous life in the process!"

"It's worth a shot, right?" Pidge then glanced down at Ziera's bare feet, skimming the area of her room until her eyes landed on the discarded Skate-Overs. "Maybe I can even take a look at your Skate-Overs, make some tweaks and adjust their settings a little, I'm sure I can make them work better if I tinkered with them long enough!"

Ziera giggled, closing her eyes with a bright smile. "I'd be honored if you were to look at my Skate-Overs! But for now, I think you should rest." She placed her hand on Pidge's head, surprising the young girl as it seemed like a gesture an older sibling would use. "You've been busy today, and I'm certain you're as tired as I am, if not more so...We can find time to discuss engineering tomorrow, ok?"

Pidge smiled as the older alien woman dropped her hand. "Okay, have a good rest!" She gave her one last wave, before jogging off towards her own room, excited by the prospect of a well-earned nap.

The older engineer watched the young paladin leave and let out a soft breath and a smile, before she stepped back into her room and closed the door, locking it shut behind her once again. However, instead of going back to sleep, she leaned against the metal surface and closed her eyes.

Despite the stress of everything that had happened over the past twenty-four hours, Ziera was glad that she had finally started to earn the trust of the Altean princess and those who worked alongside her. At least now, they all knew that she would never betray them.

She stripped off her suit, leaving her underwear on, and slipped back into bed, snuggling into the pillow with a soft purr. With the emotional stress, she had been through from finding out her birthplace had been destroyed, leaving her new home on Olkarion, joining Team Voltron and outrunning Zarkon...She was glad to finally have some time to just relax.

And within seconds, she felt consciousness slip away from her, and nothing but peace remained.

A/N: Thank you so much for reading, please review, each comment helps me improve as a writer!

Voltron Time

Tick = Second