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voltrontranscript · 4 years ago

Text

VLD S8E6: Genesis

Season 8 Episode 6: Genesis

Transcript by @dragonofyang

Summary: The Voltron Coalition has found Honerva’s base of operations on Oriande and prepares to take her down before she can use the siphoned quintessence to do untold damage, but they find her goals are not so simple, and every reality will pay the price for her ambitions.

[Google Doc]

Coran: We have confirmation that Honerva’s beasts have touched down on planets Sanook, VeXilum, Siiz, and we continue to receive more transmissions.

Veronica: This is consistent with the reports I’m receiving as well.

Pidge: The wormhole signatures we discovered on Olkarion, they were a map to where the robeasts were headed. They must have been waiting this entire time.

Keith: They’re targeting multiple fronts simultaneously.

Hunk: What do we do?

Shiro: We keep our calm. Coran, continue to mark the planets where the beasts have landed. Veronica, give us any real-time updates as they come in.

Veronica: Copy that. Just got another report from Sanook. The robeasts are covered in some type of shield like a particle barrier.

Allura: They’re not attacking the planet?

Veronica: Not yet.

[Scene change to the colony Alteans standing on Oriande.]

Honerva: For eons our people have suffered, cast out from our home, driven mad by the cursed Galra. We have sacrificed much. You have sacrificed much. But Lotor gave more than any of us. And today, his ultimate wish will be fulfilled. The Galra will pay for what they have done to the Alteans. The end for anyone that dares oppose us is near. It is time to begin. May Lotor’s light guide you.

[Cut to the meeting room of the IGF-Atlas.]

Veronica: The planets are reporting activity. The robeasts are siphoning quintessence.

Iverson: We need to engage them all, save as many people as we can. We’re talking about triage here.

Keith: We could split up the Lions.

Hunk: One Lion can’t handle a robeast on its own.

Keith: No, but it could slow them down, buy us some time.

Shiro: I say we attack them with the totality of our forces and wormhole from target to target.

Allura: No, we must attack Oriande directly. I think I know what Honerva’s doing. We know Honerva has the ability to create wormholes and that these wormholes are emanating from Oriande. She used a robeast to steal the Olkari cubes, which can mimic and intensify energy at a distance. And those robeasts are essentially armed with Komars, able to drain and transmit massive amounts of quintessence. Honerva is going to concentrate energy from across the universe to Oriande. She is making a Komar magnitudes larger than anything we’ve ever seen, something that could drain quintessence from an entire galaxy.

Sam: No.

Coran: That monster.

Pidge: What could she possibly need that much energy for?

Allura: I don’t know, but we need to act immediately. The only way for us to stop them is by going directly to Oriande.

Keith: And that’s what Voltron is gonna do.

Shiro: The Atlas will accompany you. We don’t have time to wait for the rest of the Coalition.

Keith: Contact Matt, let him know the rebels are gonna be in charge of the evacuation efforts for the occupied planets. They shouldn’t expect assistance.

Allura: Then we are in agreement. It is time to begin our assault on Oriande.

[Cut to Olia preparing to launch.]

Allura: Is everyone ready?

Shiro: We’re in position.

Allura: The universe is facing the gravest threat it has ever seen. Honerva has exploited a vulnerable people, my people, and bent them to her will. She convinced them to pilot her abominations and commit heinous acts. And now she has built a weapon that can destroy an entire galaxy. Today, we risk our lives for the greater good. We are the only thing that can stop her and defend the universe. It is time to end this war.

[Cut between Allura and Honerva powering up their respective teludavs, and then the robeasts shooting pink quintessence out from the planets they’ve occupied into deep space.]

Matt: Is everyone else seeing this?

N-7: Matt, what is happening?

Matt: I don’t know, but we’re going to save as many people as we can.

[Cut to the IGF-Atlas wormholing to the Petrulian Zone.]

Shiro: Sam, we’re experiencing interference. Can you lock that down?

Sam: I’m on it. This interference is multi-phasal. What could cause something like this?

Slav: Wait, what color socks are you wearing?

Sam: What? Why does that matter?

Slav: You didn’t answer me. Why didn’t you answer me? There’s a ninety-nine and three-fifths chance the multi-phasal interference is from a reality-ending event!

Sam: Because of my socks?

Slav: We need to modify the dichromate resonance chamber to a super position.

Sam: Good thinking. That will isolate the mutated antimatter isotopes.

Slav: And please put on some green socks!

Coran: The Atlas can’t go much further due to the Petrulian Zone’s radiation. There they are! The Olkari cubes!

Iverson: I’m not picking up any energy signatures. They must not be active.

Veronica: I’m picking something up. It’s coming from the white hole.

Allura: The Guardian. No! Where is the Guardian?

Keith: We don’t have time to engage these robeasts. Can you clear a path?

Shiro: We’ll get you through. Atlas crew, prepare for transformation sequence. Okay, Voltron, engaging now. Good luck out there.

Keith: Good luck to you as well. I’m deferring command to Allura.

Veronica: Voltron is clear.

Shiro: We need to first focus on neutralizing those robeasts. Then we can attack those cubes to try and halt the process.

[Cut to Honerva on Oriande, then to the rebels evacuating the occupied planets, and once more to the IGF-Atlas fighting the robeasts in the Petrulian Zone as the beams of quintessence reach the Olkari cubes as Voltron flies through the white hole.]

Lance: Look out! Behind us!

Keith: We gotta move!

Allura: The Guardian! She’s draining its quintessence! No! She’s destroyed the Guardian! We have to stop that witch immediately!

Merla: It’s Voltron. Defend our goddess!

Pidge: Two robeasts, incoming!

Keith: Form swords!

[Cut to the IGF-Atlas fighting the robeasts.]

Veronica: Shield energy at forty-three percent. Thirty-six.

Shiro: We’re not going to make it through their blockade.

Iverson: What’s the plan?

Shiro: Scramble the MFEs. We need their precise striking ability. Pilots, attack the weak spot on their chest plate when their cannon fires.

Pilots: Copy.

Shiro: Stay safe out there. Give them heavy covering fire so they can get in close.

[Cut to Zethrid, Ezor, and the Olkari Technician in a holding cell.]

Olkari Technician: I think we’re in the middle of a battle.

Zethrid: We need to get out of here.

Ezor: No!

Zethrid: Trust me.

[Cut to the bridge of the IGF-Atlas.]

Veronica: We’ve got a security breach reported in cell block two one four. Zethrid and the Olkari have escaped their cells. It looks like they’re on their way to the bridge.

Shiro: We don’t have time for this.

Coran: Performing evasive maneuvers!

Iverson: We have an overload in munitions bay three.

Veronica: Sir, Zethrid’s almost here.

Shiro: Prepare for a breach!

Zethrid: We’re here to help!

Shiro: What? How did you even escape?

Olkari Technician: I’m an Olkari. Your security is childlike.

Zethrid: Look, I know you don’t trust me, but we are facing certain death. Let my tech help!

Shiro: Fine.

Olkari Technician: Excellent job fusing Earth technology with Altean magic.

[Cut to the MFE pilots fighting the robeasts.]

Rizavi: I’m hit! Repeat, I’m hit! Recovering all systems.

Shiro: It worked! Pilots, we’ve got you covered. Kinkade, get Rizavi back to the Atlas safely. Griffin and Leifsdottir, use this opportunity to hone in on the robeast’s crystal.

Griffin: Copy!

Shiro: MFEs, on my count. Three… Two… One!

Iverson: Yes!

Shiro: Outstanding.

Veronica: Yeah!

[Cut to Voltron fighting the robeasts on Oriande.]

Lance: Huh? Wha… What is going on?

Hunk: Are those people down there?

Pidge: According to my readings, we’re seeing into other realities.

Lance: What?!

Pidge: There must be some kind of rip in the fabric of time. The essence of realities is leaking out. Honerva is tearing apart timelines. She could cause irreparable damage to reality itself.

Allura: Hunk!

Hunk: I feel it.

Allura: Let’s move!

[Cut to the IGF-Atlas as the white hole emits a blast and forces it to revert to ship form.]

Sam: What just happened?

Slav: I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like this before.

Sam: I’m attempting a reboot of the thera-magnetic oscillator.

Slav: Wait, did you change your socks?

Sam: What? I thought you were kidding.

Slav: Oh, no! I think we were just hit with time spillage.

Sam: Time spillage?

Slav: It’s a rip in the fabric of this reality. Pulses of quintessence are disassociating the synchronized molecules in the ship’s power crystal.

Sam: How do we fix it?

Slav: For starters, you have to take off your socks!

[Cut to the rebels as the robeast collapses and the energy beam dies.]

Matt: Everyone’s safely on board. Let’s get out of here.

[Cut back to Oriande, where Honerva screams and collapses as a bright flash of light reveals the Sincline mech kneeling in the center of the alchemical circle.]

Keith: This was Honerva’s plan all along.

Allura: No. He’s back. I can’t… No!

Keith: Paladins, attack!

Merla: Lotor!

Altean Acolyte: Lotor has returned!

Allura: No.

Merla: Something’s not right.

Allura: We need to move. Does anyone copy? Blue, please respond. Time to end this.

Lance: Allura!

Altean Acolyte: The Red Lion is moving.

Merla: Wait! Stay back! Get out of there now!

Altean Acolyte: Lotor?

Merla: No.

Honerva: Still… Altea’s wayward daughter.

Allura: Don’t you dare mention Altea to me.

Honerva: This is just the beginning. Join me and our people. Together we will go back to Altea.

Allura: We cannot go back. It is destroyed because of you.

Honerva: Think of your father. I knew Alfor well. This is what he would have wanted. Join me and the Alteans.

Allura: Never! You cannot keep me here forever. And the moment you release your hold, I will end you.

Honerva: Then you will end your friends as well. I am the only thing keeping my son at bay. Join the right side of this war.

[Cut to the IGF-Atlas as power returns to it.]

Veronica: Captain, Commander Holt got the Atlas back online.

Shiro: Get the MFEs on board.

[Cut back to Oriande as pink lightning begins to spark.]

Allura: Paladins, are you there? Paladins, respond. We must get out of here or we will all perish.

Lance: Allura.

Keith: I’m moving again. Pidge, Hunk?

Pidge: I’m here.

Hunk: Yellow’s back online.

Allura: Let’s move.

Pidge: The white hole is closing. If we don’t get out, we’ll be trapped here forever.

[Cut to the bridge of the IGF-Atlas.]

Veronica: The white hole’s energy is collapsing into a gravity surge. There’s no way we’ll hit escape velocity.

Coran: At this point, our only hope of escape is via wormhole.

Shiro: How long do we have?

Veronica: Minutes? Seconds? It’s impossible to be sure with these surges.

Shiro: Coran, move us into position to intercept.

Coran: Adjusting heading.

Shiro: Sam, I need every ounce of power you can give us.

Sam: Pulling energy from all systems.

Shiro: They’ll come.

Veronica: The white hole’s about to collapse.

Coran: They’re here!

Shiro: Coran, we need a wormhole, now!

Hunk: What the heck just happened?

Allura: We failed. And every reality will pay the price.

End.

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leakinghate · 6 years ago

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Chasing the Ghosts of Season 8

Let’s skip the flowery intros and get to the point, because this is important.

Lotor’s vindication and reunion with Allura were originally part of VLD s8 and I can prove it. Most animation relating to this plot was excised, while other clips were re-purposed to make it look like he was dead all along: but some are still in there.

The removal of this plot line was one of the major factors in completely messing up season 8, and it was a change that was made very recently; no earlier than August in fact. There is a significant, non-zero chance that an unedited version of Season 8 exists in its entirety; completely finished.

The evidence is below the cut.

Trigger Warnings: Gore - that image and discussion of it, body horror, sexism, and major character death.

There’s something rotten in the house of Voltron, and by that I mean Dreamworks animation, because for reasons yet unknown the season 8 we got was not the one the writers had planned to give us.

The people involved likely can't talk about it due to NDAs, but I follow *most* of the cast and crew on social media, and from the way many of them were talking prior to the drop it’s obvious that whatever they'd recorded had led them to expect a very different season.

The almost total radio silence afterward is also telling.

So far as I can tell, AJ (Lotor’s VA) is the only one actively posting about it, and his posts have been expressing his distress over what happened to Lotor - a stark contrast to his excitement about the season prior to its airing. It’s very apparent that he thought Lotor would have a very different fate than he appears to. At the moment of the season drop he tweeted out “Lotor was framed”, and later didn’t seem to realize that ‘Allura’ was trending because she’d died.

Some of the other VA’s scarce posts lead me to believe that they’re having similar reactions: a now deleted post from Bex (Pidge’s VA) about having watched up to episode 6 consisted of an image of DOTU Lance captioned with “[internal screaming]”. Bex has since removed all references to VLD from her bio.

I’m certain that the VLD s8 we got was NOT the s8 that was originally planned. Or the one the writers and VAs had been alluding to in various interviews up until recently.

We know there were some very last minute changes to season 8. I guarantee you that Ezor was actually dead before the backlash over Adam in August, and you're kidding yourselves if you think that epilogue existed before then either.

Kihyun Ryu's 'last Shiro' tweet - that we now know to be from the wedding epilogue - was posted on September 13th, 2018. Less than two months ago these changes were still in progress. Less than a month before the first trailer premiered at NYCC these changes were still being made.

And those was absolutely not the only things which were changed. It was hinted we should pay attention to the s7 episode "the Feud" to spot some foreshadowing. Well? I've seen both that episode and s8 and I sure as heck can't find it.

This was beyond last minute.

JDS and LM were still talking in ways that would lead us to expect Lotor’s redemption roughly up to s7 in August; so whatever happened, it went down between August and November. Which is probably why s8 is so shitty; with such a terribly compressed timeline to make edits.

And edits they were, because with those time frames season 8 was either completely finished or very near to it when someone decided that things had to change.

I can prove it.

Do you know how?

Because the animation was recycled and altered to fit the new story, with only small parts made new for it. And because it was something else first, it’s still possible to partially reconstruct the original Season 8 from it.

Lets start with the big one, the one I’m sure you’re here to read: Lotor’s redemption and reunion with Allura.

One of the most frustrating things about season 8 is that it leaves the colony unexplained. The big question, the thing that results in Lotor’s murder at the hands of people he calls friends, and leads to a power vacuum that causes the deaths of untold billions of people. What was Lotor doing at the colony?

It’s never addressed or given an answer.

At least in the version of season 8 that we got.

Or is it?

Because they might have removed the conclusion to that plot thread, but they couldn’t get rid of it entirely.

In e8 ‘Clear Day’. Allura's suffers from several nightmares/dream sequences. They don't make any sense in context, and it’s never explained what caused them. Except, they make perfect sense, if you watch them as the first step towards understanding The Colony.

Allura sees herself standing in a Juniberry field on Altea. Her mother greets her and proclaims that Allura has arrived just in time, and that only she can save them, “Only you can protect us.”

A Galra fleet passes over head, raining down laser fire.

Allura suddenly finds herself the pilot of one of the white mechs. She plunges her spear into the ground, draining the quintessence, and then fires on the fleet; obliterating it.

But as she grins in victory she realizes that the quintessence she siphoned from the planet has turned her immediate landscape to ash, including her mother. Allura is horrified, but as her mother crumbles away her voice echoes, telling Allura she is so proud of her.

In case me describing it wasn’t clear enough: what just happened to her was that Allura was literally put in Lotor’s position, operating one of his mechs. The places and the people were those that Allura cherished deeply, so that she could understand how terrible Lotor felt about what he had to do. It literally puts Allura in Lotor's place: having to take the responsibility of destroying parts of something she loves in order to protect the whole.

And her mother? The Altean who was ‘sacrificed’ in this scenario? Praised her for taking the actions she did, because Allura was the only one able to do it. And the only choice was to save most of Altea, or none of it.

When Allura eventually does take the entity into herself we see the lights of Honerva’s mech’s faceplate lighting, then flash to a scene of Lotor in Sincline. He’s laughing, grinning as he did during s6′s finale, and as the camera zooms in on his face he shouts “Follow me!”

Briefly we see Voltron in front of the planets of Earth’s solar system, which is drowned out by a peculiar scene transition: an intense white light that appears to obliterate everything as though in an explosion.

None of these scenes are ever explained, but it’s reasonably comparable to the flash of images that Haggar sees in season 3 when she is first confronted with Zarkon’s memories. We’re left with the impression that we’re about to be enlightened, and the end of the episode reveals that Allura has passed out on the floor unconscious.

In this version of season 8, we never are told what exactly caused Allura to experience those visions. We can guess: was it perhaps the entity tempting her with its dark magic? Honerva attempting to place her under a spell?

But is the entity really dark magic? It’s different from the types of magic we’re used to, and the colors of it are certainly dark, but it in itself never actually causes Allura harm. Any harm she suffers after taking it into herself is caused by Honerva exploiting it.

Could it be a spell by Honerva? Unlikely. It took her almost two whole episodes of the paladins fooling around inside her mind for her to notice they were even there. If Allura had never taken the entity none of Honerva’s plans would have ever been found out. Yes, she did steal all the energy from the Atlas’ crystal, but she did that primarily to combat the Atlas and disable it. She didn’t need to get it from there, the energy her Komars were able to provide was all she needed.

So what caused those visions?

Lotor did.

Once he was free of the rift he was able to connect with Allura somehow and reach out to her. That was really him. Where he is now, trapped under Haggar’s control, he has no means to combat the witch. But Allura does. Everything he says to her? Is true.

The next episode, s8e9 “Knights of Light: Part 1″ begins with Allura awaking, Coran and Lance by her bedside. She’s been asleep for two quintants (days). She has apparently come up with a plan to infiltrate Honerva’s mind, but from whence she gets this plan is never explained. That’s because we’re missing an entire episode between these two. This is where Lotor’s redemption happens, where he and Allura finally reunite. God knows what else was in that episode, what else was happening while the paladins were waiting for Allura to wake. Lotor bids Allura to follow him, to finally allow him to tell his side of the story, and for some reason we weren’t allowed to hear it.

But from what we did get to see? It all but confirms @crystal-rebellion‘s Colony Theory. Albeit, the white mechs were built by Honerva, but Lotor was attempting to keep the colony safe in the only way he knew how. The Alteans who died did so willingly; to preserve the lives of all the others.

There’s a repeated narrative that the only person who encourages Allura to take action, to strive and push forward, is Lotor. Sometimes others accept it, but they never encourage her. Everyone else seems to consider her too fragile, or not capable of making her own decisions. They want to protect her and coddle her, don’t believe she should be taking any risks. They are supportive emotionally, but want to limit her physically. They care about her, but don’t truly trust her judgement or want her to be making her own choices.

With Lotor though, it’s different. He truly sees her as an equal, respects her judgement in her areas of expertise. This plot line revolving around the entity is a prime example. Lotor provides Allura with the information, that she has everything she needs to take down Honerva right in front of her; she just needs to utilize it. But from the moment Allura wakes the people closest to her doubt her decisions and choices.

And yes, those choices lead to painful consequences, but in the end they are proven to be the right ones, to have been necessary. Allura took a calculated risk, and it pays off - if she hadn’t they’d have never caught Honerva in time to stop her from destroying everything. They wouldn’t even have discovered her plan in the first place.

If Allura hadn’t made the choice to listen to and trust Lotor, by her own judgement, reality itself would have ceased to exist.

Both Coran and Alfor are given specific scenes this season where they judge and approve of Lance in his pursuit of Allura. But key, neither of them ever ask - or even mention - Allura’s feelings on the matter. The s8 we got, rather disgustingly, portrays this as the right thing. I believe the original s8 was meant to subvert this. Because Lance is everyone else’s choice for Allura, but when Allura was allowed to make her own choice? She chose Lotor.

Allura once again ends s8e10 ‘Knights of Light: Part 2′ unconscious. I firmly believe we are missing more moments - if not an entire episode - with Lotor here, in s8e11 ‘Uncharted Regions’ - probably explaining somewhere along the way how exactly he is able to contact her in this manner.

Which, uh... as to my personal theory on how that is, well... what did Lotor and Allura do together that might have crafted a unique spiritual bond between them?

What did you two experience in the quintessence field Lotor?

But, those were happier times...

I also think this is the episode, this missing one, that that particular image properly belongs to. We now see it in the previous episode, as one of Honerva’s memories. But the reason we see it is that the paladins apparently see it too. The only problem is, they don’t react to it at all. They literally have a stronger reaction to finding out they can see Honerva’s memories in the first place. There’s no possible way that Allura saw the melted corpse of the man she loved and had no discernible reaction. We see her reactions to Lotor’s presence multiple times over the course of s7 and s8, and they’re always intensely emotional ones.

But speaking of that image, since we’re on the topic. That’s a very detailed image.

There’s details there you don’t immediately spot, because you’re too distracted by the horrific imagery of the corpse of a main character. A character who’s tragic, abusive childhood was the focus of almost an entire episode earlier in the season.

Details such as the motes of light floating up from his body.

Motes of light we’ve seen in exactly two instances before: from Zarkon and Honerva’s eyes immediately after they were restored back to life by the rift.

And from Zarkon’s body: vanishing after he died.

Yeah guys, I’m about to make that image much worse.

That’s not Lotor’s corpse, because he’s not dead.

He’s still in there, in that state, and he’s been in there for over three years.

Melded, physically and mentally, with Sincline by his time spent in the quintessence field.

What. The. Fuck.

As the season progresses it becomes much more difficult to tell what was supposed to be happening because of how badly it’s been chopped up, re-arranged, and edited.

But there is a very distinct difference between Sincline’s two appearances in action - that is, it’s only in the first one that it actually is in action.

The last time we see Sincline move of it’s own accord is e6 ‘Genesis’. From the moment he reappears Lotor is on the attack; he is stopped only two times, once of his own accord and once by Haggar’s mind control.

And that one time he stops himself? Is when he takes aim at Allura. She’s running across the ground, about to strike Honerva with her bayard, when he raises his right arm and takes aim. We see her in his sights, through his eyes. And the view zooms in on Allura’s face.

Lance sees what’s happening and dives in Red to stop him, but is blocked by one of the white mechs.

Yet. He lowers his arm and doesn’t take the shot.

Lotor never fires.

But immediately afterwards the white mech lingers too close and Sincline impales it with it’s tail. It’s not an aversion to killing that stayed his hand.

It’s that it was Allura.

This scene unambiguously shows that Lotor is both alive inside that mech and somewhat aware of himself. He’s become a robeast.

Yet after that episode the mech never moves again. It hangs lifeless in space during the battle at the pyramid; the white mechs having to do the fighting. The lights on it’s chest have gone out, only relighting when it is charged with quintessence from the Komar. For all intents and purposes, Sincline is empty.

Oh, and speaking of Sincline, up until s8e9 it’s only ever referred to as “Lotor’s mech,” but suddenly, in e11 ‘Uncharted Regions’ they’ve learned its name and Allura calls it “Lotor’s Sincline”.

I think that at some point between ‘Knights of Light’ and the second half of e11 ‘Uncharted Regions’ Lotor was to have been rescued. 'Uncharted Regions’ is one of the worst episodes this season for flow: it’s extremely choppy and hard to follow - flicking back and forth between scenes without anything really happening in them.

But the most telling thing?

‘Uncharted Regions’ begins with Honerva in her haloed mech searching Alternate realities for her ‘perfect’ one. We see several clips of her doing this, the mech floating in front of the pyramid, alone, with the spinning disk of its wings as a viewport.

Suddenly, almost exactly halfway through the episode, we get an image of Honerva kneeling inside the pyramid, in her Altean commander uniform, one uniformed Altean to either side. She says “The princess has awakened,” and then the scene changes.

When next we see Honerva she’s floating above the pyramid, the silent and immobile Sincline by her side.

The entire time this is happening there is combat going on around the pyramid, first with the coalition fighters and then with the Atlas itself. This sequence appears in episode as though it all happens successively in a very short period of time. But it doesn’t make sense like that. Why should Honerva stop what she’s doing, and exit her mech just to check if Allura is awake?

In this scenario why does Honerva even care if Allura is awake? By this point she’s apparently found her perfect reality and is prepared to move on to it? She doesn’t need Allura for anything, none of her plans require Allura. Why should she even bother to announce that Allura is awake, as though this is something she’s been waiting for?

This entire episode, including the fight scenes, has been chopped into little pieces and rearranged. Other scenes have had edits to their animation, or were re-done entirely. What we have in ‘Uncharted Regions’ is a frankenstein’s monster of an episode constructed of the tiny remnants of of at least two, possibly three, original episodes.

If you watch this episode carefully you’ll notice that there’s a clip out of order. The lights on Sincline’s chest are dark until it’s charged with the quintessence from the Alteans on the Atlas. But. The close up shot of Sincline the paladins see immediately upon exiting the wormhole in front of the pyramid has the lights lit up. This clip clearly is part of the sequence we see later in the episode just before the mechs combine. So when the crew on the bridge of the Atlas is shown reacting in horror, whatever they’re actually reacting to has been cut out.

These original missing episodes would have contained what I’m fairly certain was our big Alchemist vs Alchemist reprisal fight between Honerva and Allura; something we’ve been waiting for since season 2′s finale.

Why was such an anticipated fight removed?

I think it’s because the fight was over Lotor, and ultimately Allura would have rescued him.

Every time Allura uses the powers she obtained in Oriande it’s mentioned where she got them, and often that she has them because of Lotor.

She’s shown again and again restoring life and health.

What happened, what we’re missing, is her using the abilities she has thanks to Lotor, to save him.

Allura is supposed to storm that pyramid, infiltrate it, and rescue Lotor from the evil witch holding him captive. She’s supposed to find him in that horrible state we saw him in, and she’s going to heal him. She’s going to fight for him, to protect him, when no one else in his life ever has.

There’s also a clear switch. When Sincline is active and alight Honerva several times refers to it as ‘my son’ but afterwards, she stops and uses Sincline as a tool for her to reach an Alternate Reality and obtain a ‘new’ version of Lotor. With the exception of one shot, where, since we can’t actually see her speaking it seems that the audio and animation are sourced from different original scenes, Honerva ceases treating Sincline as Lotor after the lights go out.

The line that causes Honerva to snap s8e12 ‘The Zenith’ is when the little alt Lotor says “My mother is dead”. It’s framed like a deliberate callback, like it should be echoing something. But it’s a line we’ve never heard. I’d hazard that this final rejection, this line was spoken by *our* Lotor as Allura is rescuing him.

Lotor was not dead in there, he was alive, and he was saved.

There is a really good theory going around, my friend @tsunemori told me about it. I don't know who first came up with it, but I fully support it, because I noticed the scene in question was really off too.

But the theory is that that hospital bed scene? Was originally Lotor in the bed after they rescued him, and Allura was in Lance's place. Which makes total sense, because after that scene, when Lance takes Allura to the bridge? His height is all wrong, and he is hanging onto her for support instead of the other way around: it should be Lotor there.

Do I have any concrete proof of this one? No. But there is something off about that scene. It just doesn’t feel right.

So yeah, if I ask myself, “Is this a scene that might have been re-animated, the characters traced over and re-drawn as different ones?” I can absolutely see that. When looking for places where actual edits to the animation have been made you have to factor in several things: the complexity of the animation - how many characters, how many settings, how much movement, who is the focus/moving/talking.

This is both a pivotal scene, and an incredibly easy one to alter, comparatively. Two characters, one laying still in a bed and only getting a single one-syllable line - the other character’s name, which might have been taken from anywhere. Lance has a long string of dialogue, but he’s sitting beside the bed the entire time, and he moves very little.

I strongly believe this scene was either altered significantly or created whole-cloth for this edited version of s8.

Things that are much harder to alter, because they’d be much more expensive, are the fight scenes. It’s where I started looking once I suspected what had happened with season 8, and it’s where I started finding things.

S8e12 ‘The Zenith’ is one of the best episodes in terms of flow, and I believe that’s because it suffers some of the least editing.

We are however missing at least two scenes: a farewell between Allura and Coran - presumably as Allura boards the Blue Lion - and an explanation as to how Voltron followed Honerva into her destination reality after the rift closed on them. I believe both of these scenes were edited out because Lotor was key in them; several scenes in the following episode s8e13 ‘The End is the Beginning’ lead me to believe that he spent the final battle in the Blue Lion with Allura.

Two scenes during the fight stand out to me: the first, a split screen where Keith is mysteriously given a double width section as compared to the others. It’s especially noticeable, because he’s not even centrally placed and he’s scaled to a different size than his fellow paladins. In the entirety of the series we have never before seen a split screen cut among an even number of characters where one of them is given odd prominence like this. The screen is arranged so the characters appear in a color gradient, Keith is red-black and immediately to his left is Allura who is blue. If there was a missing section here, the color space would correspond to indigo/purple - and those are Lotor’s colors.

The second is a moment when Allura is speaking facing forwards and very clearly looks to the side and makes eye contact with someone. Now, VLD does have moments when the paladins will react in their own lions as though they can see each other, but this isn’t like that. It’s the way her eyes move, and look, she’s talking to someone who’s point of view we’re seeing her from. And that person is Lotor.

There’s also a peculiar moment in this episode where the same split screen is used twice; another thing which has never before happened in the series. It appears first about a quarter of the way through the episode as the paladins enter the stage for the final showdown and then again as they push Honerva into the glowing whiteness at its center. I believe that the second one of these is its proper place, and that the one that originally went in the first instance had Lotor included in it.

Finally, and this is going to take several images, so be warned. When the paladins appear before Honerva in the heart of it all, fading into view, they’re spaced very strangely.

There’s six of them, so you’d expect they’d be spaced something like this:

But they’re actually spaced like this:

(yes, I know Honerva would be blocking someone there. She moves. I just picked this cap so you could see all the shadows; there’s no point showing you the empty space)

It rather looks like there’s someone missing.

The last half of the final episode is so heavily manipulated that it’s difficult to say what actually happened. But we have two very strong clues from which we can reconstruct it.

Remember the leaks?

Now that we know the leaks were real, it begs the question, why was this scene one of them. Unlike the others, which were all from the epilogue, this scene is from roughly halfway through the episode.

Well, I believe we have the answer now: whoever leaked them chose those because they were the scenes they had on hand. These were the scenes that were not originally part of VLD s8, and were added only in the last minute edit.

This one in particular is another where I think it’s taken an actual scene and traced over it to make it into something else. Lance is far too tall here, and doesn’t look like himself hardly at all.

It’s also very clear from the framing of the shot where Allura is going down the line of paladins and hugging them that Lance should be getting a send off in sequence to the others, not apart like this.

No, I think Lance was animated over Lotor here, and the audio was spliced in parts from Lance’s actual goodbye scene and Allura’s “I will always love you” comes from somewhere else. That portion of the line is said in a distinctly different tone of voice than Lance’s name beforehand. There’s different emotions to it than the rest of their conversation, and I’d guarantee we’re hearing it out of it’s original context.

I don’t know what else changes in the ending, but I’m very certain that it was not supposed to be read as Allura dying.

The reason we now read it that way is that Allura and Honerva are seen greeting the spirits of people we know that are dead. I’m fairly certain this scene is either new, or it was only Honerva going to meet them, and of course, that Lotor wasn’t among them.

And I think it was Allura and Lotor who stayed behind to do the work of restoring all realities. My proof of this is one of the very best and strongest among my evidence: the very last closing shot of Voltron: Legendary Defender, after the credits.

The lions of Voltron take off to rejoin their new Cosmic Entities; Allura and Lotor. Whoever was responsible for editing Lotor out of this picture only actually slightly blurred him.

Thanks to @articianne for the outline!

If you play around with the image contrast and brightness it’s even more obvious that the both of them are there, back to back.

It only looks like Allura dies because the spirits but without them there? It looks like they ascended to a higher plane of existence or something.

They haven’t died at all. They’ve become, of all things, like Bob, the gameshow host from s7e4 ‘The Feud’. An ‘all-powerful, all-knowing interdimensional being’.

And y’know? Bob was perfectly able to interact with the paladins no problem.

I don’t understand why these changes were made. To me? This looks like a perfectly happy ending.

What else was cut I don’t know. But I found all this evidence by looking for the things that weren’t there, that a competently structured plot would lead me to expect would be. Chasing ghosts, as it were.

A short list of additional things I strongly suspect were cut?

Several scenes between Keith and Shiro.

A pivotal scene between Allura and Coran.

A follow up event with Pidge referencing her sacrificing her videogame to get Allura a dress.

A scene between Lance and Pidge, possibly referencing said videogame.

A resolution to Lance and Pidge competing to get Allura the best present.

A conclusion to Axca’s sub plot.

A Hunk and Shay scene, to explain how and why the Balmeras all show up in s8e12 ‘The Zenith’.

An additional scene with the blade for the same reasons.

Actually, y’know what? I’m not just going to leave this, because I have a strong suspicion what one of the other cut subplots was about.

You see, the other half of ‘Clear Day’ isn’t entirely filler - it’s specifically a callback to the season 2 episode ‘Space Mall’, and it’s not the only one in this season. The little shopping trip from s8e1 ‘Launch Date’ is also one. Specifically they’re part of a plot for Pidge about her feelings for Lance.

In ‘Space Mall’ Pidge and Lance spend their time scrounging up change to buy a videogame console. The game that they purchase is part of a series that Pidge later trades the only copy of the latest version of to get Allura a dress. During ‘Clear Day’ Pidge and Lance both spend their time trying to get the best present for Allura (hint hint, Pidge is the one who actually got the ‘”something sparkly”).

Now, as I’ve already covered, there’s missing content between ‘Clear Day’ and the next episode. Part of that content should have been what the other paladins were doing while Allura was unconscious. And in series, we never actually see Allura receive either of those presents that were bought for her. So where did they go?

I think Pidge and Lance spent the time waiting for Allura to wake up together, and they got to talking about how Lance has once again failed to acquire the sparkly thing Allura would like. Perhaps Pidge trades her mining helmet for Lance’s signed Blue Lion, and then it comes up how both times Lance went to get a present for Allura he ended up getting one for Pidge.

And that first time was the video game wasn’t it? A perfect place for Lance to find out what happened with the video game in s8e1.

So why did Pidge trade that game? To make Allura happy, yes, but also to make Lance happy. Because Lance likes Allura and Pidge wants them to have a good time, because Pidge likes Lance. Like, check e1 when Allura tells her she's going on a date with Lance, Pidge's reaction... isn't really a happy one.

I think this should have been the turning point for Lance, where he learns the difference between infatuation and sincere affection. I think very soon after this his relationship with Allura would end, and he would naturally progress into a different sort of relationship with Pidge.

As much as I love s8e7 ‘Day Forty-Seven’ I don’t think it was originally part of season 8. I also get the feeling that s7e2 ‘Shadows’ may be composed of scenes we were supposed to have gotten throughout the later half of season seven - though I expect that this change was made in a much earlier spate of edits, likely when s7 was re-done. It’s been confirmed that this happened, and that s7e4 ‘The Feud’ was made to ease the pressure on the exhausted animators who’d been working overtime to get the other episodes done in time. It’s never been confirmed what exactly was changed about season 7 or why, but I highly suspect it was to include more content with the MFE fighters, who the higher ups at Dreamworks might have been hoping to spin off into a sequel.

I suspect that the episodes were shifted forwards, because the first half of the season has no 'event' episode. s8e6 ‘Genesis’ should have been that, and what we're missing is the mid-season event. Which was where they would have saved Lotor. They excised an entire climactic fight between Allura and Honerva, reprising their battle from season 2. The alchemist vs alchemist fight that was repeatedly alluded to being inevitable, yet we never got.

It was animated and voiced to be Lotura and Lotor's vindication.

But someone wanted that changed.

We know when and why ‘The Feud’ was created, and because we were teased in several interviews to pay attention to it so that we might spot some foreshadowing, we can definitively say that the mucking around that was done to season 8 happened at a much later date.

In fact, the animation portion was likely completed all the way back in June. These are two bumper images that were used to advertise Season 6, which released on June 15th.

We haven’t yet seen this image of Lotor appear in the show (for what it matters, the full color one is the correct way around; Lotor’s hair always curls up over his right shoulder, the left can go either way), we have scoured every frame of him to find it, but it’s just not there (yes I know it looks like it should be from s5e4 ‘Kral Zera’, but trust me it’s not). Every other image that’s ever been used in these promotional bumpers has been from somewhere in the show, but this one is so far absent. Therefore it’s from a piece of animation yet to appear, and one which was made by the time these images showed up in June.

Now that we know what the truth is, I am sure we will get the full story eventually. It's only a matter of time before it filters out.

But right now is the key time if we want to convince Dreamworks to release the original season 8. Tweet at them, email them, snail mail if you have the time! Sign that petition!

The fandom response now will determine if we find out what really happened sooner rather than later - and later could mean years.

We are the only people who can make this happen. The cast and crew are all bound by NDAs, and publicly reacting negatively towards a show you worked on is practically career suicide.

It has historically been fans who’ve made a difference when companies interfere with their favorite shows. Fans have been able to effect change in the past, and they will again in the future; lets make sure this is one of those times. We need to fight to get the VLD we should have gotten in the first place.

Just remember to apply your energies in the right places. JDS and LM aren’t perfect people (no one is!), but this isn’t their doing. This is someone above them responsible for the mess that was s8. Dreamworks Animation is the culprit. There is a very real chance that the original season 8 is completely finished and able to be released, and we just might get it if we’re persistent enough.

Be polite, be reasonable, but be firm. Take this proof and use it. Show them that we know they changed things and that they can give us the original if they so choose.

The messages they inadvertently pushed with this slap-dash edit are vile and toxic, and people far more knowledgeable than I in those areas are speaking out about them. This needs to be fixed.

They need to say something. They need to tell us why they changed it. They need to give us the original Season 8.

Click here for Part 2: Seek Truth in Darkness

I, and any of you who enjoyed this meta, owe @nomadicism a huge thank you. She reminded me of that strange "Follow me!" scene, which prompted me to crack open 'Clear Day' for another watch... and I realized that Allura's dreams weren't nonsensical at all.

As always, thank you to my many friends in the Lotura Discord. You give me the strength and encouragement to keep going. I couldn’t have done this without you.

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voltron-s7-8-rewrite · 5 years ago

Text

The End is The Beginning

This is part of my Voltron Season 7 & 8 re-write. If you are interested start HERE PREVIOUS

Here it is, the final story. Thank you to everyone who has read this. I truly hope that you enjoy this ending. I'm sorry it took so long to post. I meant to have this up earlier, but then the Holidays got in the way. It all works out though, as I started writing this last January.

Without further ado~

_______________________________________________

The End is The Beginning

In a vast, white, void each of the Paladins slowly opens their eyes and look around. Standing side by side, there is nothing to be seen but an endless plane.

Pidge questions where they are, and a bitter voice from behind says they are at the end of all existence.

The Paladins all turn to find Honerva sitting in the distance, cradling Lotor's dying body in her arms. They slowly approach her and Allura asks her why she did what she did, why did she destroy everything.

Honerva ignores the question, focusing on Lotor's battered face. She gently says that all she ever wanted was to have her family living peacefully, allowed all the joys and love that life offers. Her voice turning bitter she says that wasn't to be as over and over others robbed them of every chance of happiness they could have.

Allura quickly cuts though her tirade and says that what she says is not true, Honerva was offered all that and more, but rather than accepting that sometimes life comes with hardship and disappointment. She and Zarkon meddled with powers and abilities that were unnatural and corruptive. They chose to force their will upon the universe, no matter the cost; unfortunately that cost turned out to be theirs and their son's lives. No one robbed them; they made the choices and willfully squandered what they had.

As she speaks, more people start appearing in the void behind the Paladins; Shiro, Krolia, Kolivan, Matt and his parents, Axca, Ezor, Zethrid, Romelle and Sven, the MFE's, and the rest of the Voltron Coalition.

Honerva sees them appear, and knowing them to be the Paladin's loved ones she rages once more. She spits that they couldn't possibly understand, they are all allowed happiness. They get to stand there with all who they love, strong and healthy, while her son, who was never even given a chance at a life free from darkness, is dying broken and abused in her arms. She finally answers Allura's question saying that if she and her son weren't allowed to be happy, she ensured no one was.

Lance speaks up and gently says she's wrong, they do understand. Hunk says they have faced sorrows in their life, and Pidge says that they've been through hardships, Shiro says they've suffered through trauma and terror, Keith says that they have lost loved ones, and Allura says that they have all faced trials and pain that seemed insurmountable, but still, they faced and overcame it without taking it out on others.

Allura watches Honerva, who sneers dismissively, unmoved by their words, and sees that the woman can't comprehend anyone else having pain. She says that Honerva's heart is so rotted, that all she sees is her own suffering. It's then that Allura comes to a realization; she closes her eyes reaches out with her senses and feels the last traces of the corrupted Guardian still festering inside both Honerva and Lotor.

Opening her eyes, Allura steps towards them. The Paladins become alarmed, but Allura turns and gives them a comforting smile, motioning them to stay; she knows what she's doing.

Approaching Honerva, the woman warns the Princess not to come near her or her son, but Allura gently says she is not going to harm them; she's going to free them. She slowly bends down in front of them and lays a hand on each of their heads. Glowing, her Alchemy flows through her and into them.

Gently and painlessly, she removes and purifies the last bit of the White Lion that had corrupted mother and son so many years ago.

Honerva, free of its poison for the first time in over 10,000 years, slowly opens her eyes and clearly sees all those who are standing before her. For the first time in those thousands of years she is whole.

Then, realization sets in as she is bombarded with the knowledge of all the evil she and her family committed. Finally able to know and understand her vile actions and crimes, she lets out a mournful scream of terror and anguish that strikes all those there to their cores.

Weeping bitterly, Honerva realizes that she was wrong; she says she does deserve this, that everything that has brought her to this moment was her own doing. She lets out another cry, unable to do anything else.

It's then that a hand touches her cheek, gently brushing away her tears. She opens her eyes to find Lotor looking up at her, for the first time in their lives, his gaze is filled with love for her. Honerva gasps as he calls her 'mother' and slowly sits up from her arms.

In shock, Honerva can't believe what she's seeing. Lotor gently embraces her, saying he's free of the entity and like her he can see everything so clearly now.

A new voice says they all do.

Everyone looks up and is stunned to find Zarkon appearing behind his wife and son, but this isn't the Zarkon that ruled as a Tyrant for 10,000 years. This is Zarkon, the Paladin of the Black Lion, whole and free of the corruption of the Guardian.

He bends down to be on level with his wife and son, and Honerva asks how he can be here. He explains that when Lotor ended his body, his soul was finally freed from the corrupted White Lion; his restored soul was able to come here to join with all those who had passed. As he speaks Alfor, Trigel, Gyrgan, and Blaytz appear behind him.

The Paladins and the Voltron coalition stand in disbelief. Keith asks how this is possible, and a new voice with a familiar twang responds that just like how their mortal bodies are made out of the same cosmic dust, their souls are made of the same Quintessence. Here, within the Connected Consciousness of all Existence, they live. With that, Keith's father appears, smiling to his stunned son and wife.

After that, others begin appearing as well; Melenor, Adam, Bandor and his parents, Marco and his father, Hunk's Aunt and Uncle, Rhyner and the Olkari, Antok, Regris, Thace, Ulaz, Rolo, Admiral Sanda, Te-osh, Ozar, Ven'tar, Narti, and countless others. All have smiles and joyous tears, being reunited with their loved ones.

After the shock wears off, Honerva turns to her husband and says that it's too late, there is nothing they can do now that she destroyed everything, but he says that's not true. Now that she is no longer corrupted, she can power the Sincline with true Alchemy, a life-giving force, and restore everything back to what it was.

Allura hears this and realizes Honerva does not have the power to do that alone. Solemnly she steps forward and says that if she helped, they could do it together.

The Paladins are shocked to hear her say this, and tell her that she can't; but Allura says it is the only way and she knows that they would all do the same thing in her place. Honerva doesn't have the power to do it alone, and this is the only way to restore everything.

The Paladins know her words are true, they all would offer to this if they were in her place. Still, they won't let her go this alone, each steps up and says that they will go with her then.

Allura argues that they can't, they are still needed, Voltron is needed. They ask her what good Voltron is if it's missing its heart? They know there are others that can take up the mantle of Paladin; they will not leave Allura to this fate alone.

Quietly watching this, Lotor says that they are all correct; Honerva doesn't have the power to do this alone, but Allura is still needed in the universe. That is why he will assist his mother with restoring the Universe.

He looks at Romelle and the other Alteans, then Axca, Ezor, Zethrid, and Narti and says that he can never right all his wrongs he's committed, he then looks to Allura and says that at least he can do is ensure that the universe still has her as a guiding light. He owes it not only to both of his people -Alteans and Galra- but to the universe as a whole. He asks Allura to allow him to do this for her, and everyone else he has wronged.

Allura and Lotor look at each other and there is an understanding between them. She agrees and steps back towards the Paladins.

Lotor smiles and thanks her, then turns and takes his mother's hand; they turn and walk together towards a light as Zarkon smiles on.

Those still living, and those who have passed share one more moment together, all at peace knowing one day they will all be reunited once and forever more in the Connected Consciousness of all Existence.

_______________________________________________

A light bursts forth and with it, all of reality comes back into being. The Coalition ships and Voltron drift silently above Oriande. All traces of the Rift, Sincline, and Komar Mechs are gone.

The Paladins slowly open their eyes and look around. Keith asks if everyone is alright and they call back that they are. Lance asks if they think everything is back to normal. Pidge starts scanning the system and says she can't find anything out of place. Allura closes her eyes and reaches out with her senses. She gently smiles and says everything is as it should be.

The Paladins look at the spot where the Rift had been with mixed emotions.

They are then hailed by The Atlas, and Shiro's voice comes through, asking them if they are alright. Keith confirms that they are, and asks him the same. Shiro says everyone has reported in and that all is well.

Allura suddenly speaks up in awed disbelief, saying that it's over, it's really over. The Paladins listen to her as she continues to repeat that it's over, the war is over, and they won. Each time she says it, it settles in more and more. Realization sinks in and the Paladins break out into tears and cheers as voices across the Coalition join them in a chorus of victorious cries.

Shiro smiles tearfully and tells the Paladins to come home.

_______________________________________________

Following this, we see a montage as the Universe regains its balance now that it's completely freed.

_______________________________________________

The Paladins arrive back in The Atlas' hanger where everyone is there to greet them, including Romelle and Sven. Overwhelmed at seeing them alive, the Paladins rush and embrace them.

Reunions happen all around as Keith shares hugs with his mother and Shiro as Kolivan stands by smiling with Axca, Ezor, and Zethrid.

Pidge, Matt, and their parents embrace as a family never to be torn apart again, and Veronica hugs both Lance and Hunk.

the MFE's and the Paladins all shake each other's hands and gives hugs, and Pidge reunites with the freed Olkari.

Tavo and Luca introduce the rescued Alteans to Allura, their Princess. The Alteans embrace her as their own, bowing down to her in respect for all she's done.

From there the Voltron Coalition returns to Earth, The Atlas leading the way.

On earth, Hunk, Lance, and Veronica are reunited with their families as the world celebrates the return of the Defenders of the Universe.

Over time Voltron, BOM, and Rebels work to take down the remaining warlords –most of which surrender without a fight thanks to former Warlords like Lahn aiding the Coalition, and Keith being there as the Black Paladin helps to bridge their trust, the Black Lion once more being a symbol of hope for the Galra.

The remaining Warlords and Altean Acolytes, as well as the surviving Alteans from the alternate universe are judged for their crimes; with Allura and Keith helping to see that they are justly dealt with.

Voltron takes time to revisit old worlds, from Arus, Puig, and Reiphod, to the Frozen Planet of the Mer, and everyone in between. Reconnecting with all their old friends and ensuring all planets and people have a voice in the new, freed universe.

During this time, Matt and the Rebels help to move Galra off the formerly occupied planets while Keith, Kolivan, and Krolia guide them to a new life.

Allura and the Alteans, along with Keith and the Galra, and the Olkari all work with the Coalition to find new home worlds for their people.

The Olkari are the first to settle peacefully on a world brimming with beautiful forests. The now Hoktrill-free Moxilous joins them, happily living a new life with the Olkari.

Sven joins the garrison, and works alongside Shiro, Veronica, and Slav, fitting into The Atlas crew perfectly.

Hunk and Pidge are approached by Shiro and the Garrison. Hunk is asked to become an Ambassador and voice for Earth. And Pidge is approached with the idea of creating a new defense program for Earth: Vehicle Voltron. Both eagerly accept.

As Keith and Allura's focus turns more to their people, and Pidge and Hunk's focus becomes that of working with the Garrison in different ways, Lance happily continues to work with the MFE's, taking command in the Red Lion and going on missions with them, helping the Rebels, and aiding anyone in need.

Allura and Keith finally find home worlds for their people, two uninhabited planets that circle the same sun and rely on one another. Believing the planets to be perfect, as they rely on each other to keep balance in the system, they feel that's how the Alteans and Galra must learn to see the Universe; all are needed in the balance of life.

With this their new home found, the Alteans approach Allura with a gift: a new crown. They bow and offer the crown to Allura, asking her to officially lead them. Honored by their request, Allura accepts this duty.

The montage ends with a ceremony attended by species from all over the universe, Allura is crowned Queen of the Alteans.

All the races cry out in joy for the Queen who helped save their universe.

_______________________________________________

In the engine room onboard the Atlas; Sam and Matt are looking over the systems while Shiro assists them. The father and son finish their final check up, and Shiro puts one of the panels back into place. Sam says that everything looks to be in perfect condition and ready for the upcoming launch.

Matt playfully teases his father about how he's being overprotective of the ship, and that he's got to let his baby fly on its own now. Sam grumbles while Shiro chuckles.

Shiro says that they are going to really miss having Sam with them, and says that if he and Colleen ever want to come back, there will always be a place for them. Sam thanks him and says that even though they loved being a part of The Atlas, they both agreed that it's time for them to settle back down on Earth and reclaim the life they lost. They are both looking forward to going back to teaching, especially now that they have students from all over the universe coming to Earth to learn. He then playfully points to his son and adds that the universe has enough on its plate dealing with one Holt in space now that he's living with the former Rebels as they continue to keep peace.

It's Matt's turn to grumble as Sam and Shiro laugh at his expense. Shiro says he's sure when Pidge eventually heads back out to space she'll be able to clean up any mess that Matt makes. Matt raises his hands in surrender and says they can lay off now, and the three men share a laugh.

The playful jibes over, Matt asks Shiro if he's totally ready to leave Earth. Shiro says he is, and though living on New Altea will take some getting used to, he'll have friends and family with him there. Besides, with Altean tech everyone is just a wormhole away.

He says that being out in space, learning about the universe, and everything that's out there has always been his dream. Now he'll be able to learn more than he ever thought possible without the worry of any illness to hold him back, or a universal war to wear him down. Matt smiles and says he understands exactly what he means.

Sam places a hand on both of the young men's shoulders and says that he's proud and excited for them both, but they both better make it back for Holidays, or else Colleen will personally hunt them down and drag them back to Earth.

The two men laugh and say they will.

_______________________________________________

Inside the Garrison's kitchen, Hunk and Shay hand Romelle a small box. Hunk says it's a going away present for her, all of his mother's recipes. Pidge helped him translate them into Altean so she can practice her cooking. Shay adds that her grandmother's soup recipe is also in there, since she liked it so much.

Romelle is touched by the presents and asks them to visit often. Hunk says his and Shay's training to become Ambassadors for their peoples will keep them tied up for a while, but as soon as they become fully fledged diplomats, they will all be able to see each other more often. Romelle says that if they need any off planet training, they are more than welcomed to come to New Altea. Hunk and Shay agree and thank her.

Lance and Pidge appear in the kitchen and greet the two ladies as they approach Hunk. Lance complements Romelle's crown; officially adopted into Allura's family, she is now the crowned princess to the Altean people.

Romelle readjusts the crown -Allura's old tiara, now bearing a new stone- and says it's still taking some getting used to. Lance and Pidge say that it suits her. She warmly thanks them, saying that their support gives her courage.

_______________________________________________

Later, Hunk, Pidge, and Lance walk down the Garrison halls, catching up with each other as they have all been so busy with their work. Pidge talks about how the creation of Vehicle Voltron is going well, and the wonderful multi-planetary team they have assembled to work on it.

Lance shares all the work he and the MFE's have been doing together, and how even though it's been hard work, it's been so good to see worlds and races really recover from the war. The two are happy for him, and he points out that it's not the same though. He misses flying with Hunk and Pidge and says if they want to come back to Voltron he's sure they could; the Lions still haven't found replacements for them yet.

The former Yellow and Green Paladins thank him, but say that it's just as the Lions once said, their time as Paladins came to an end. They, like Shiro felt they had other things that they needed to do, and Yellow and Green encouraged them to move on.

Lance sighs wistfully, but says he understands, he just misses Hunk, Pidge, and Allura on the team. Hunk and Pidge encourage him, saying that they are certain that the lions will find new Paladins soon.

Lance grumbles that it will only happen if Keith settles down for one moment so they can actually focus on it; he's been so busy helping the Galra that he's hardly around to do anything Voltron related.

It's then that they see Keith coming out of a meeting with the Blade and a number of other Galra diplomats.

Lance says speak of the Mullet, and the three approach him. They see a solemn look on his face and greet him, asking what's wrong. Keith, deep in thought says that he was asked to be one of the leaders of New Daibazaal's government.

The Garrison trio are surprised to hear this, and Lance guesses that he turned the offer down, but Keith reveals he actually said yes. He's not sure how long he will hold the position, but he's accepted the role for now. The others are shocked at first, but quickly congratulate him, pulling him into a group hug. All three know he'll do great as one of the leaders of his people.

They then realize what this means, Keith is leaving Earth.

Hunk cries that everyone is leaving and Lance and Pidge agree, saying that it's not fair. Keith smiles at them, warmed that they will miss him. He says that at one point in his youth, he had nothing on this planet that would have kept him here, he would have left without a second thought; but now he has so many friends and loved ones that he had to stop and think hard about this choice.

However, he never felt that Earth was where he belonged, he feels called to the stars and even if New Daibazaal isn't where he permanently settles, he knows he needs to be with his mother and their people right now.

He looks to the three of them and says that they have helped change his life for the better and that he will miss them so much. The three get teary-eyed and hug him once more, telling him that their doors will always be open to him.

Once they break out of the hug, Keith asks Lance if they can talk privately for a minute, and they break off from the other two.

_______________________________________________

Keith and Lance walk for a bit and Keith explains that with him leaving Earth, he's stepping down from being the Black Paladin. Lance is shocked and deeply upset, first Allura stepped down to rule as Queen, then Hunk and Pidge due to their duties at the Garrison, and now Keith? He says the original Paladins were able to fulfill their roles despite being on different planets, why can't they?

Keith acknowledges that, but says times were different back then. The universe is still very unstable at the moment, and planets can't afford to have leaders and vital people constantly run off to fight elsewhere. Besides, he says he's now come to the same realization that Shiro, Allura, Hunk, and Pidge had before him; there's a new purpose out there for him.

The two walk into the Lion's hanger where they look up to Black. Lance wonders who will lead Voltron now, and Keith says Black has already chosen its next Paladin. Lance asks who, and Keith looks at him and says "you". Lance looks from Keith to the Black Lion in disbelief.

Lance is stunned into silence, when he finds his words he says he is honored, but he's not sure if he's ready for that. Keith smiles and says that he knows Lance is. He's seen how Lance has grown from a playful showman, to a focused leader. He says he believes in Lance's ability and knows that he will make a great Black Paladin. Lance says that means the world to him, coming from a leader he truly respects.

Lance looks up to the Black Lion and asks it if it's ready for this new partnership. The Black Lion's eyes flash and it stands and roars in answer.

The two look up to the Lion, with humbled pride. Lance says it will be difficult finding and learning to work with a new team. Keith smiles knowingly just as the hangar doors open and says he doubts that. Lance turns to see the MFE Pilots walk in, not noticing the two Paladins.

Lance looks from Keith to the MFE Pilots and back and asks if he really thinks they could be the new Paladins. Keith asks him what he and Black feel.

Lance closes his eyes, testing the new bond he has with the Black Lion, and realizes it's true, the other Lions have already chosen the MFE Pilots as their Paladins.

He opens his eyes and looks to Keith with a smile. Keith pats him on the shoulder and tells him to go talk to his new team. Lance laughs and runs over to the group.

_______________________________________________

Night before the Atlas is prepared to launch the five former Paladins, Lance, and Coran sit and have a private dinner together on the roof of the Garrison. They talk and laugh, reminiscing over their adventures while sharing their plans and hopes for the future, just enjoying each other's company.

As the sun starts to go down, they realize how late it's gotten. Lance calls for one final photo, and everyone gathers together and takes the picture. They look the photo over and all approve of it. They sit there, knowing they should head off to get some sleep before the launch, but none want to leave yet.

Coran sees this and smiles. He coughs to get their attention and points out that they never finished their last Monsters and Mana campaign. Allura says that it will be a little while before they see each other again; they may forget the nuances of the story if they don't finish.

The others smile, and agree that that has to be finished. Coran pulls out the game and they play together under the stars.

_______________________________________________

The next day people from all over the place come to the Garrison to witness The Atlas' launch.

Pidge, her family, Hunk and his family, along with many of the other Coalition members and former-rebels watch and wave from the ground as the mighty ship begins to take off.

A loud roar is heard and Pidge and Hunk cheer as the Lions of Voltron fly overhead. The Lions move to follow behind The Atlas, escorting it to its new home.

Lance, flying the Black Lion, now wearing new Black Paladin armor asks if the others are alright. Griffin in Red, Rizavi in Blue, Leasdottir in Green, and Kincade in Yellow all call in positives.

Lance smiles and makes a call to form Voltron.

_______________________________________________

In the Atlas, Shiro and Sven arrive on the bridge where some of the new Galra leadership, including Krolia and Kolivan, as well as Queen Allura's Altean council of Coran, Romelle, Luca, and Tavo stand.

Shiro sees Keith in his new Galran armor is standing with Allura near the view screen. He approaches and tells them they will be arriving to New Diabazaal soon to drop the Galra off, before taking The Atlas to their home on New Altea.

Allura and Keith smile to him, and the three watch the screen as they approach the two Planets.

Shiro asks if they are nervous. Keith says no, he feels confident and hopeful. Allura agrees, smiling brightly she says "after all, this is the beginning of a new story."

_______________________________________________

The End

_______________________________________________

Notes:

I am so sorry this took so long to post. I did not mean for it to take this ling, but I just had a rather off holiday season (not bad by any means, just off), so it's been harder for me to get back into the swing of things.

It does kind of work out though, as I created my first draft of this rewrite pretty much one year ago.

But anyhow, let's get into talking about this ending.

So, my biggest problem (and I think most people's problem) with the ending of the series was what happened to the main characters, especially with the end cards. I heard they were supposedly tacked on at the last minute, and it sure seems like it. While Shiro, Pidge, and Hunk had somewhat 'happy' endings they were only happy in a very sterile way.

What do I mean by "sterile", well, there was nothing deep or meaningful to their look at their end cards:

"Shiro found his happiness and finally left the battlefield behind" Ok, that sounds good and all, but there was no development to this 'happiness'. What even makes him happy? I though his passion was space exploration, did he get to return to that? We don't know. He's just happy.

"The Holt Family established the next generation of Legendary Defenders." It's nice that the family stuck together, but that doesn't give us anything about Pidge specifically. Plus not everyone would get the Vehicle Voltron cameos that give weight to what they are doing.

"Hunk created a culinary empire, bringing the universe together, one meal at a time." Hunk's is the best and as we at least know he's doing things he enjoys, cooking and bringing people together. We can assume it's like what was shown earlier in the episode, where he cooks for leaders during a delegation, but the image presented looks more like he's the owner of a galactic restaurant chain more so then anything else.

The summaries to their lives just feel so hollow, and those were only the 'happy' ones, it only gets worse from there.

Coran didn't even get a title card, but let's talk about him for a minute. He was left completely alone without any close friends or loved ones nearby. Even though Merla was shown speaking to him, showing he talks to people, they had no relationship. What were we supposed to get from that scene? I was left with the feeling that he would forever be alone, his life dedicated to nothing but ensuring that Altea flourished in Allura's name, never stopping to rest, least the ghosts of the ones he lost haunt him.

Even though I hate Allura dying (and I'll get to that in a moment), if they had Romelle there with him at the end instead, his story would have ended on a more positive note. Since they had an established friendship in the show we could have seen it as him having lost one daughter only to gain another. We would know he would be able to have a new family with her.

Speaking of Romelle, all she got was a cameo relegated to the background of Hunk's ending where she wore a chef's outfit. Such a great ending for this important Voltron legacy character! [/sarcasm]

Back to the main Paladins;

"Lance continued to spread Allura's message while surrounding himself with the things he loved." It sounds like he become an Altean missionary who shared the gospel of Allura, even though the picture just shows him working on his family's farm. I know many others, and myself felt that he would forever pine after Allura, living his life out in a way that forever left him longing for something more. How is that a good place to leave a character?

What about his dreams, his goals in life? He was the most ambitious of the Paladins, and while his ambitions at the beginning of the series might not have had the best reasoning (going to prove how good he is by being better then Keith and stuff like that), his reason should have grown and changed though the series, not his whole existence. He should have still been determined to become a Pilot and do great things, not to prove his worth, but because he had the passion, drive, and determination to go out and do them.

"Keith helped transition The Blade of Marmora to a humanitarian relief organization." Keith working for a humanitarian relief organization, that's a good idea. Fits with his caring and how he shows his love through acts of service. However, him transitioning The Blade of Marmora into a humanitarian relief organization is such a stupid concept. That would be like something tossing out the idea of turning the Navy Seals into a humanitarian relief organization. These people are specifically trained to fight. While they can offer aid, and work with humanitarian relief organizations, they are completely different things!

On top of all that, due to how the last two seasons went with his supposed friendships with the Paladins, I was depressingly left feeling Keith's story ended exactly where we met him at the beginning of the series: A loner with few friends and connections. Yes, I know he now had his mother, but she was to be shown busy as a leader of the Galra without Keith. While Axca, Ezor, and Zethrid were in the background of his title card, when were we shown them becoming close? We weren't. The golden rule of visual storytelling is "Show, don't tell". Because we weren't shown, we can't say it happened.

Heck, I don't even remember if Keith spoke to Axca at all after "The Way Forward", and she was the one he had the most positive interactions with.

With all the Paladins spread out back on Earth, Keith seems to have once more gone down a path of solitude. The character who needed friends and family the most ended up alone.

And Allura's ending was the worst ending of them all. I've talked many times throughout these rewrites of the many horrible things I felt was done to her character throughout the last two seasons. Killing her was the moldy cherry on top of that spoiled and rancid cake. Allura, who lost and sacrificed so much; whose character should have been raised up and allowed to flourish into a leader better than those who came before her, instead her ending was the same fate as the final villain, and there was no rightful justification for it.

As Allura and Honerva walk to their deaths, Honerva smiles, happy over the outcome as she gets to be reunited with her husband and son, while Allura looks sorrowful, her promising life ending too soon.

What an insulting and reprehensible ending for this character.

I wanted to rectify all these things with this final rewrite, and give them the happy and satisfying endings they deserved. I hope even if you aren't one hundred percent satisfied with my endings for the characters, they are at least more palatable then canon.

Now that I've spoken about the heroes, not onto the Villains.

So, I know Honerva's ending here has shades of her original ending, but I really hope the differences stand out in what I wrote. I'm sure many would want to see her just outright killed/defeated, but since I really play up the 'The Zarkon family is possessed and unable to control themselves' I went with her having a redemptive ending.

The difference between my version and canon, is that canon showed Honerva's issues to be her thinking she was never happy. After Allura made her remember the good times, and that was it. No acknowledgement or apologies for all the evil she committed. Just "Huh, your right. Ok, let's bring the universe back." Nothing was even done with the Rift Creature that was still in her, Allura, and the other Alteans. That was all forgotten along with every other interesting plot thread.

With the chance of repeating myself from other chapters; my version of the 'Rift Creature' -actually the corrupted White Lion- literally warped how she, Zarkon, and Lotor saw everything. They could not truly see right from wrong, only their own desires and how things affected them. So, once freed from that corruption they regained their true selves and instantly knew all the evil they committed. Honerva wanted to make things right. I emphasize 'wanting" cause that's the key to redeeming a character, the desire to make things right.

Her and Lotor sacrificing themselves to fix the universe they helped tear apart was their way of making right all their wrongs and redeeming themselves.

And while I'm sure many would have liked Lotor to live, I see this as the better way; only because if he lived he would have been held accountable for his crimes just like the other Galran Warlords and Altean Acolytes. At least now he can unite with his uncorrupted parents and friends in the Connected Consciousness of all Existence, and one day reunite with the Paladins and experience a true friendship with them.

Speaking of the Connected Consciousness of all Existence.

So, my version of this realm is clearly some sort of Well of Allsparks/Heaven-esk place. I know that idea might be a bit corny, but like I have Keith's dad point out, in S2E4 "Greening the Cube", Pidge says that she was told everyone was made up from the same star dust. Keith was so heartened by that idea, that I thought in this place called "Connected Consciousness of all Existence" it could be the same for people's Souls/Quintessence.

Plus, I thought it lead to one of my favorite parts of this chapter, the return of all the dead characters. I truly wanted this final story to be a celebration of everything that we loved about the series, and this allowed me the opportunity to bring back all the characters we grew to love. Even the minor ones that meant more to the fandom then they did the writers.

It also leaves us with the satisfaction and peace knowing that even though the Paladins are all going their own ways in life, no matter what, one day they will all be reunited not only with each other, but with all their loved ones here.

One more thing I wanted to point out is that Keith does not rule all of New Daibazaal. He is one leader amongst many. I have seen "Emperor Keith" AUs and not only do I feel that role doesn't fit Keith; I don't think that role should exist on New Daibazaal at all.

The Galra just got through living under the thumb of one ruler for the past 10,000 years. There are going to be changes with their new world and that starts with how their leadership is set up. Rather than one person who has all the power, they have multiple leaders who come together and govern for the people. They are not permanent positions and can be voted out.

Keith is certainly an important voice, and one who was actually asked to take a role of leadership by the people (there's a lot of half-breeds who look up to him), but he is not the final say. One day his time as leader will be up, and he will move on.

I actually do envision his future much like the ending of the show where he ends up working with a humanitarian organization. But this time around he, Axca, Ezor, and Zethrid would team up with Allura, Shiro, and the Garrison to create a multi-species group that would then go and work with Voltron and Vehicle Voltron to help those in need.

See? Despite living some time away from each other, all the characters can end up continuing their lives together after all!

Here’s a bonus gallery of a bunch of the designs I tried to recreate/come up with for how the characters look at the end.

First, I forgot to post this back with my version of S8E5. This was what they wore to the Paladin’s game night. As you can see I changed the colors of Rizavi and Leifsdottir’s outfits. I gave Griffin the clothing Lance wore on his date in S8E1. Since he didn’t use the outfit in this version I thought it would work here, especially since I gave Griffin a ‘well thought of’ family, I though his casual wear would be a bit more fancy. For Kincade, I had my friend who really liked him help me design his clothing. We thought this fit him.

This is the clothing the characters wear after the final montage. Of course the Paladin’s outfits are based off the canon outfits shown in the final group picture in the show. I didn’t have much to go on, so I made a lot of it up.

Allura’s dress is the one shown in the alternate universe Honerva went to (Coran at this time would be wearing the outfit he there too).

I completely changed Lance’s hair. I don’t know why the creators wanted to give him such an unkempt look in the last design, but I saw someone do an edit where they gave him Matt’s hairdo from the ‘Chip’ scene at the end. I thought that looked so good on him I opted to give that to him. Plus, now Matt can keep his long hair!

So these are the outfits the characters are wearing in the final scene when they leave for New Altea/New Daibazaal. I gave each Altean a bit of pink in their clothing. Since Pink was the color of remembrance, I figured many, especially the leadership would wear it not only in remembrance of all the Alteans that were lost, but for everyone who had been lost not only at the hands of the Galra, but at the hands of the Alteans as well. It’s a reminder to never let it happen again.

I forgot to put a new stone in Romelle’s crown. Woopsie!

I tried to blend Armor the Galra of old wore with the BoM uniforms. Showing that they are not completely leaving everything that once was behind. Instead they are taking what had been good and bringing it back.

\Keith’s outfit I blended not only with the BoM and ancient Galra armor, but also added some of the Paladin style as well. His armor is black instead of blue as a symbol of his time as Black paladin. I’m not complety satisfied with his design, bit this is where I settled for now.

I opted to give the new line of Plaldins completely new Armor. Since Voltron is currently set up on Earth, their armor is a blend of Altean armor and the MFE flight suits.

I also wanted to do some other pictures like Sven in the Garrison, and some others, but I never got to it. Maybe in the future.

So that’s all for now.

I do have an idea for a short story that would be a continuation of the actual canon story; a way to fix the blunders of the ending and wrap things up on a better note, and be connected to this post of mine. But no promises to when that will be made.

So, for the time being this is where it all ends. Thank you so much for reading all this. I truly hope you enjoyed it.

Have a wonderful day!

#keith voltron #allura voltron #lance mcclain #voltron #takashi shirogane #voltron pidge #hunk garrett #MyVoltronSeasonSummary #mywritings

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dreams-of-kalopsia · 5 years ago

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Fictober Prompt 21

“Change is annoyingly difficult.”

Voltron fanfiction (Plance)

No warnings apply.

Read it on AO3.

____

Part 1 (Pidge): Timing

Part 2 (Lance): Intuition

Part 3 (Colleen): Grounded

Part 4 (Hunk): Change

Hunk senses something wrong the moment he lays eyes on his best friend. Lance is sitting alone at their usual table, elbow propped and sulking face resting heavily on his fist. His other hand pokes at his food with a spork.

“Stop that,” Hunk scolds as he takes the seat across, carefully placing his lasagna-laden tray on the table.

Lance stops. But only to give him a sullen glance.

He shakes his head in annoyance. That’s when he sees the half-finished tray of food beside his friend’s. Everything clicks in his mind.

Pidge was called away again.

“Who was it this time?” he asks without preamble.

Lance’s answer is a grumbled “MFE pilots.”

“Aww man, again?” Hunk groans. “We don’t see Pidge her first week of being grounded. She gets a little leeway, and Sam, Matt, and Slav drag her around with them for days. They finish whatever they were doing, and the MFE Division takes her away—with me, because apparently they’re big fans of Voltron’s tech team, but that’s beside the point—and now the MFE pilots want something from her again?” He throws his hands up. “What about us? We haven’t hung out for weeks!” He then points at Pidge’s tray. “Pidge didn’t even enjoy her food long enough to realize I made it, in celebration of our supposed hang out day!”

Another grumble. The weak reaction aggravates Hunk, and he crosses his arms.

“You didn’t notice either, did you.” A statement because his friend clearly hasn’t. “I’ll assume it’s due to Pidge bailing out on us and not my culinary skills.”

No response other than louder stabby noises and a sulkier Lance.

“Ugh. I miss her!” he gripes. “Don’t you?”

A flash of regret crosses Lance’s face.

It’s a stark contrast to the confused, embarrassed blushes he’s had for the past two months or so. Hunk can’t remember exactly when he began seeing the expression, but he’s pretty sure he hasn’t seen it on his friend until around three weeks ago. At first, he thought it was because Allura’s been spending most of her time with Romelle and Coran in the hospital wing, waiting for the Altean pilot of that Komar-robeast to regain consciousness. He didn’t even connect anything when news of scary Mrs. Holt grounding the Green Paladin of Voltron first reached their ears. But after repeatedly watching Lance make that expression at every mention of Pidge, Hunk is now sure that it’s a Pidge issue his best friend is having.

And he thinks he has enough facts to put together to figure out what’s been happening with his friends.

Fact number one: Pidge likes Lance. She told Hunk herself.

Fact number two: She used Hunk’s cheesy, thoughtless pick-up line—a fact that will forever crack him up—on his best friend. Lance told him himself.

Fact number three: Lance also said that he’d tried asking Pidge about what she meant but ended up taking her to Varadero for sunset watching instead. How he managed to turn an impending serious talk into a day trip, Hunk will never know.

Fact number four: Pidge was grounded the day after and disappeared for a week.

Fact number five: She’s been spending less time with Hunk and Lance since her reappearance. Okay, no. For the benefit of the doubt, Hunk will allow that she’s become so busy she barely has time to hang out. That still implicates her because she doesn’t make time for them. She’s not the only busy Paladin on Earth, after all; if he and Lance can do it, she should’ve been able to do it, too. So the benefit of the doubt doesn’t work for her… well, benefit.

Sooo something happened in Varadero convincing Pidge that Lance rejected her, hence why she’s limiting her interactions with him without making it obvious that she is—which, contrary to what she believes, she’s being totally obvious about.

“I wasn’t rejected, Hunk. I just decided to give up on him,” Pidge said around a mouthful of peanut butter cookies he’d given as secret bribe, during one of their breaks from upgrading the MFE units last week.

Give up? On Lance? As if.

As if Hunk doesn’t catch the longing glances she’d send their friend when she thinks everyone’s too distracted to notice. As if she doesn’t stare after Lance with a regretful expression on her face the exact same way he sees Lance do.

Yeah.

He chomps grumpily on a heaping spork of lasagna.

As if.

Hunk hates that he’s the only one who notices stuff like this. He hates it. But what he hates more is his inability to leave ostensibly well enough alone once his gut tells him that something’s off. And what he hates most is his perceived, reluctant duty to be the voice of reason that points everything out to everyone else. Because that’s how he ends up standing right in the middle of things whether he likes it or not, how he unwittingly advertises himself as mediator when things turn out to be a full-blown conflict.

It’s exhausting sometimes. Getting to say ‘I told you so!’ loses its vindicating satisfaction when one gets to do it all the time. Still, bringing up an issue so the people involved can address and resolve it is an awkward task he’d willingly undertake if it means they’d all get along again.

But that’s the problem with the current thing he’s embroiled in. There’s no issue. No conflict, no falling-out, no friendship broken. Just Pidge dealing with rejection in the maturest manner Hunk has seen from her and Lance acting like he’s lost her even though she never left in the first place.

It’s like watching two people dance expertly around each other. Except one twirls in pirouettes of classical ballet, the other breaks it down with hip hop moves, and neither of them is aware of dancing at all. As a frustrated spectator on the sidelines, Hunk is honestly starting to worry that his motion sickness will return one of these days.

A resounding stabbing sound causes him to jerk his head up towards the source. He finds Lance staring out onto the hallway beyond the mess hall’s window, fingers frozen and tines of his spork impaling a slice of lasagna rather morbidly. Following his friend’s gaze leads Hunk’s eyes to Pidge, who’s talking animatedly with Nadia and James.

Oh boy. Great timing, Pidge.

She meets their gazes and sends them a genuine, apologetic look, but she doesn’t spare them a minute to give an actual apology. In three seconds, she’s walked past the windows, disappearing on them again. She makes it look so easy.

“Gotta admit, that one hurts a bit,” Hunk says with a wry smile. His best friend releases a miserable sigh at the same time. He turns back to Lance in surprise. “Chill, dude! It’s just one missed hang out day. No need to be that dejected.”

The stabby noises resume with increased force. He resumes eating his food.

“Look, you’re being dramatic. It’s not as bad as that time Eliza Moreno rejected you—no, no,” he corrects himself, “You didn’t really like her; you just liked flustering her. Okay, so not as bad as when Noelle Page dumped—”

“I dumped her.” Whoa, a response, albeit grumpy.

“Yeah?” Memories of that messy one-sided breakup resurface in his mind. “Yeah, right!” He slaps his forehead. “How could I forget! Remember how she waited crying outside our bunk room until you talked to her? Even our COs couldn’t take her away.”

Lance’s sulky frown deepens. “I don’t think anyone could forget.”

“So not as bad as when Mila Chen—”

“She was over me by the time I became fighter class.”

“Oh. What about when Sophie Carson—”

“Turned out to like Madison Boyer?”

“…That didn’t bother you? You were courting her for some time, right?”

“To help make Maddie jealous and confess to her.”

“Ooh. An ally, I see.” Hunk raises his cup to his friend, impressed by this inside info.

Lance just scoffs.

“Okay, wait. I’m sure about this: Jenny Shaybon. The only Jenny who ever mattered to you. You had a really good thing going on for over a year before she left the Garrison to chase her dreams.”

“We parted as friends.”

“You did?” Hunk pouts, then sighs. “So I guess it’s not as bad as when Allura and Lo—” Lance strikes the table with his palms.

“Why are you going through my romantic history, Hunk?” he demands, still miserable but now also fed up. “Just tell me what your point is.”

“My point is that you don’t have to feel as bad about a missed get-together as a failed relationship.”

Though Hunk’s tone is placating throughout his explanation, his best friend shoots him an affronted look. “First of all, my relationship with Allura hasn’t failed; it’s actually just about to start. Secondly, I don’t feel as bad about this as you think.”

“So stop looking like you do.” The words seem to strike Lance like a direct, physical hit, and Hunk has this acute feeling that he just said the wrong thing at the worst possible time.

But why?

Before Hunk can begin to figure out what he said wrong, Lance gathers his and Pidge’s trays and quietly stands up.

“Uhh, where are you going?”

“I’m heading back to my room. Sorry, Hunk. Let’s hang out another day.” Lance walks out of the mess hall without another word, head bowed and shoulders slumped.

“…Wow. Left behind twice today,” Hunk grouses once he’s alone. “Leave me a third time, why don’t you. I feel the love.” He chews angrily while preparing for another bite. “What was that for, anyway? I just pointed out what I see.”

Why’s Lance so touchy when it comes to Pidge? She may (pretend to) have given up on her feelings for him, but it’s not like she’ll ever give up on their friendship. Besides, it’s not like he knows about how she feels. Oblivious when it matters, that guy. And yet he acts all broody as if he’s the one who got—

A sudden idea skews Hunk’s perspective and with it his spork of lasagna. The chunk falls with a small splat on the table. The metallic clatter of spork hitting food tray follows soon after.

The way Lance acts whenever Pidge is mentioned…

It’s as if he’s the one who got rejected.

“Hoooly crow,” Hunk mutters to himself, palms finding their way to his temples. “What?!”

He knows not when the change in his friend happened, only that it did. He also knows that it complicates everything. It adds unannounced contraflow lanes to a one-way expressway. It flips the script on itself after getting flipped once already. It turns a straight line into a triangle.

And this change…

“…is annoyingly

difficult

.”

____

Thanks for reading! Names of Lance’s non-canon exes credited to @artemisarya. You’ve been a huge help! ^u^

#fictober19 #writings #voltron #plance #i mean #i know it's november #i'm so sorry

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hunterguyveriv · 5 years ago

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Kacxa Week Extended Day 14 - Life on the Atlas

I passed right out after work so I didn’t get a chance to post this last night. It was a little harder to do write but I am happy with it. I wanted to show their life on the Atlas as close to them being in character when not on duty, but they get a pleasant surprise when Garrison brass comes up with a Wargame.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Keep Reading~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It had been a year since the Atlas officially launched to take the fight to Honerva. A solid year since the Galaxy Garrison became part of a more significant force. Yet to typical Human fashion, they set themselves up as the head force. Something that rubbed their many newfound allies the wrong way. There were Olkari, Unilu, Tjaujer, Arusians, Blade of Marmorans, Balmerians, and many others all living on the ship.

As the Atlas droned through the vast nothingness of Space, it was es by an escort fleet of Rebels and a Galra ship with the Marmora emblem on it. They would all run drills to keep themselves ready. Well, the Blades were in charge of such exercises… well more like Krolia. She was an expert in all the BoM Galra to know how humans would react and create counters for their reactions. But today there was no drill; the tension was high on the Atlas in which the crew got a deserved break.

Two of those were Galra on the Atlas; her Son - Keith and his Jhuk’ un’ dak Acxa. After spending some time on a hostile planet in which they became close, they started being with each other more and more. He had gotten into many altercations with crewmates of the Atlas over her being Galra. Most were broken up by fellow crewmembers and Paladins, others resulting in physical fights.

Today started as usual for the lovebirds. They met on the training deck at 0400 when no one was up except the secondary crew. They did their typical warm-ups before running the equivalent of 5 miles in simulated gravity four times greater than Earth’s gravity.

They rest for ten minutes before they started sparring. They start with traditional sparring before selecting replicas of weapons from Earth's history - Keith the bokken - Acxa the saber. Not wanting to be disturbed, they lock the training deck. Acxa takes her Garrison tee off revealing her human sports bra. Keith, in return, takes his standard black tee-shirt off, revealing his chest and abs along with scars he acquired since becoming a Paladin.

They meet in the center circle. The two of them gave the standard proclamations in traditional Galra before she attacked. Both aggressively sparred and flirted with one another while sparring. Keith was the better blade wielder, and he always found it cute she'd get flustered and upset when he managed to lock their weapons and kiss her on the nose or cheek good morning. But she was also starting to figure out how to eventually surprise him.

By 0700, their sparring match was over, and both had to clean up and report for duty. Acxa had to report in to the senior tactical officer under Shiro for planning an attack on Galra installations, and Keith had to report in for the morning briefing. It was with Shiro, some of the other Garrison Bass, Allura, Blade of Marmora, and the heads of the Voltron Alliance.

Today he found out that Blade Intel has discovered that Honerva had recovered Lotor’s Sincline ship and was trying to figure out how to activate, duplicate it, or incorporate it with more of those Komar-Mechs. Something that shocked not just Allura but Acxa. So it was decided that with each of the Sincline ship schematics were retrieved, the Garrison would run drills with reconstructed versions of the ship.

Keith suggested that Acxa should pilot one of them, that she did have the most experience with each ship. Which the Paladins even Shiro agreed, and the MFE pilots, namely Griffin, protested against it. Shiro ordered wargame Scenarios to commence the following day with debriefing immediately after

Acxa was looking over the first ship, which was the 3rd part when Allura and Lotor collaborated. She was impressed that the human engineers with little help recreated the ship she and Keith had their first intimate dance. She walked around it as Olkari engineers who helped filled her in on the added abilities they added.

She looked at the doors as the Paladins walked in. Allura and that loud, obnoxious one… what was his name again walked in first, she took notice that they were smitten with each other. Making them easy targets. She saw Pidge walk in half dead and hair to prove it. She made a note that she would be easy to eliminate during the simulation. The yellow one walked in eating something. She smirked because eating before a G-Inducing fight….. well, things end up messy.

Then the MFE pilots walked in. Like her, they were doing visual checks of their fighters. Acxa was sizing them up; the blonde was too analytical, so she deemed her a threat to take care of right away. The tall, dark one was too much of a sniper, so thinking fast during combat was not his strong-suit he would be taken care of after the blonde. Then came the sassy one and Griffin, the one Keith had warned her on. They were the best pilots of this group, so taking them down will be challenging. But seeing how cocky they also were, Griffin the obvious, she was going to have fun playing with them. Like a cat plays with a prey animal.

Griffin looked over and saw her looking over to them and the Paladins. She gave him a smirk that seemed to get under his skin. He saw her move her head slightly as the door opened. It was Keith and Shiro walking into the hanger bay.

Shiro was talking to him about something as he walked in, clutching a PADD in his right hand and his helmet in his left hand. He handed the PADD back to Shiro in which Shiro walked back to the observation lounge to watch the launching of everything. Keith put his helmet on and started walking towards the location of his lion.

Griffin: I hope you can keep your half-breed girlfriend in line or take her out with your “superior flying.”

For once, when he was having such a good day until it had just been ruined none the less. But too many eyes were on him to physically reprimand him.

Keith: And why would I do that?

Griffin: So she doesn’t learn our strengths and weaknesses.

Keith: Oh, don’t worry, she already knows.

Keith slapped him on the arm.

Keith: Besides, WE, are the last defense.

Griffin: What?

Keith: The Voltron lions are going to be the last line of defense for the Atlas. Your… fighters will be the first line, and the rebel ships will be the vanguard.

Griffin: But…

Keith: You guys fought SO well against Sendak’s fleet, so you will have to fight Sincline-A, Blade of Marmora fighters, and cruisers during this wargame.

Griffin: WHAT?!

Keith: What? Can’t be all THAT hard for the Garrison’s best pilot?

He walked away with a smirk on his face as Griffin seethed, glaring at Keith as he continued to walk to his lion. He winked at Acxa, who even-sized him up and winked back at him. She walked up to him, giving him the typical Galra greeting, which he returned well aware Griffin was watching.

Keith: You are going to go easy on me?

Acxa: Not a chance.

Keith: Just the way I like it.

Acxa: You, me?

Keith: Nope.

Acxa: Atta boy.

Shiro over the intercom: Pilots prepare to launch!

Acxa entered her fighter first. The MFE-Pilots in theirs. Keith briefed the Paladins on their role as he entered the Black Lion and was seconds later in the controls. The lions all roared to life. Shiro’s voice came over the comms, “LAUNCH!” Acxa took Sincline-A and rendezvous with the Blade of Marmora wargame fleet. The MFE-Fighters launched and met up with the rebel ships. The lions launch from Atlas last.

As to her plan, Acxa made short work of the MFE-Pilots, which everyone on the bridge could hear their protests and Griffin screaming obscenities in his cockpit. She went a little easy on the Rebels and left most of them to the Marmora ships. They were brothers and sisters in arms, after all. She played with Pidge, who was too tired to keep up and Hunk, who was struggling to keep his lunch down.

Having helped Lotor create the original version of this ship, Allura knew what to expect and quickly got the upper hand on Acxa when tag-teaming with Lance. But Lover-boy, who was in the second-best lion to keep up with her, got distracted when he got shot down by Krolia’s cruiser. Allura was taken down seconds later by Marmoran fighters, her scream “quiznak,” along with some obscenities she learned on Earth had the bridge crew laughing.

Keith was in the process of “destroying” the Marmoran fighters that the simulation called for their withdrawal. Leaving him… and her. Black Lion and Sincline-A. It was as if they were sizing each other up. They were waiting for those disqualified to return to their bases of operation.

Keith: Shall we finish our dance, my dear.

Acxa: We SHALL!

As ships became disqualified, they were ordered to return to base. Inside Atlas for the Lions and Fighters. Besides Atlas for the rebel ships that joined the exercise. For the Marmoran fighters, they had to return to their home cruisers. As long as there remained fighters, the wargame went on.

In the lounge, Romelle greeted the Paladins and the MFE-Pilots, who grumpily flopped down on the couches looking at the monitor. She offered refreshments and snacks for the main event. Even smacking Griffin for bitterly commenting, “Gee what a surprise, the half-breeds are the last ones standing.”

Then without warning, the Black-Lion and Sincline-A engaged each other like they did nearly four and a half years ago. Weaving and bobbing out of each other’s blasts, trying to get the better on the other as they did those years ago back when she was still loyal to Lotor. But now, this was fun with her Grek’ un’ dah.

They would continue at it for nearly an hour. It was apparent to the crew of the Atlas that they were having to much fun. The Paladins grew bored, making the declaration “no wonder he likes her…” The MFE pilots went on to do their other duties. Romelle stayed watching her brother-friend and his future mate play-fight, eating the snacks and drinking the refreshments no one wanted because they were all made to look like fools.

Even Shiro was sitting in a “Captain’s Chair,” supporting his head up with a fist and wrapping the fingers of his other arm on the chair. Making a mental note “not to pit Acxa and Keith against each other again.”

But on the flip side, both Galra-hybrids had a new thing in which they could use to challenge each other. Something to add to their daily routines to keep themselves sharp.

#kacxa #vld kacxa #keith #acxa #kacxa week 2019 #kacxaweek2019 #Kacxaweek19

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chancellormatt · 5 years ago

Text

Voltron Rewrite Episode Fourteen - The Noose Tightens

Emperor Zarkon stares down at the altean colony with glowing eyes. Most of the alteans are training, sparring with weapons or carrying materials.

A door opens behind, and in walks Sendak. He approaches, coming to a stop just behind Zarkon. The Emperor doesn’t turn to face Sendak.

“...we still have not heard word from your son.” Sendak finally says.

“I am unworried.” Zarkon replies evenly.

“Sir?”

Zarkon chuckles. “I’m quite certain that boy hates me. And yet, he also seeks my approval. He’d never run, and he’ll never work up the courage to turn on me. I have no doubt that at this moment, Lotor is seeking a way to redeem himself. And he does his best work when he’s been properly motivated.”

“I see.” Sendak says thoughtfully. “But you are aware that Raimon is also with him?”

Zarkon chuckles deeply. “Of the two of them Raimon is even more unlikely to betray me than my son. I tested him quite thoroughly, to be sure. He completely under my domination. That man wouldn’t turn on me, not for any reason. If I asked him to, he’d slaughter ever man woman and child in this colony. I’m certain he only joined Lotor to keep an eye on him. It’s nice to have loyal pets, don’t you think?”

“Yes, my lord.” Sendak agrees.

Zarkon continues to stare down at the alteans. Sendak begins to grow agitated.

“...my lord, would you not like a better view? Our military has some fine displays that I’m sure would bring honor to you.”

“I don’t know about that. It's begun to grow on me.” Zarkon nods to the alteans. “I have half a mind to destroy them right now. And yet, at the same time, I find myself feeling a certain sense of satisfaction.”

“Satisfaction?”

“Because they serve me. Think about that. Some of Alfor’s people managed to survive and now they are mine. And there isn’t a blasting thing he can do about it. They even fight against his own daughter. Ironic, don’t you think?”

“Certainly.” Sendak says.

“Alteans.” Zarkon shakes his head. Pitiful creatures, every one of them.”

Sendak hesitates. “...except for the Lady Honvera, of course?”

Zarkon’s eyes finally shift away from the scene to bore into Sendak. “...of course.” He stares at Sendak several moments longer. “Was there anything else commander?”

“There is nothing, my Lord. I apologise if I’ve bothered you with my presence. I shall return to my duties. I believe Lady Honerva required my assistance with one of her machines.”

Zarkon waves a hand, dismissing him. Sendak exits, leaving Zarkon to resume staring down at the alteans.

***

Princess Allura stands in front of the Blue Lion, a determined expression on her face as she stares back at the other approaching Paladins.

“Everyone ready?” She asks, more than a trickle of urgency in her voice.

“Yeah, yeah!” Lance calls back, dashing up to Red. “We can’t all get ready in like thirty seconds like you.”

“We’re ready, Allura.” Keith says, stopping just in from of this own Lion. “...are you?”

“Of course.” She replies immediately.

Keith catches her eye. “You sure?”

“They’re my people, Keith. I was, quite literally, born ready.”

He hesitates for a moment, then nods. “Alright then. Let’s go.”

***

The Five Lions of Voltron, along with the repaired Atlas, fly out into a dense debris field. Broken and twisted metal drifts through the cold vacuum of space, forming an ocean of broken starship parts.

“Real mess out there huh?” Hunk remarks.

“Yeah what are we looking for again, Allura?” Lance asks.

Allura leans forward in her seat, squinting at her viewscreen. “...that.”

“Huh I don’t see anything.”

“I got it, Allura.” Pidge says tapping away at holopad. “Some geniuses around here can’t use their eyes.”

“Thanks Pidge.”

Lance just rolls his eyes. A holographic overlay appears on all of the paladins’ screens. It shows a bright circle around a large piece of debris, which appears to be half of a destroyed cruiser, that has a small light shining on and off it's side.

“So...it's shiny?” Lance asks.

“Try a code, Lance. Check out the pattern.”

The shining goes on and off again in a complex but noticeably repetitive pattern.

“Huh,” Lance says, sitting back with a sigh. “Guess I’m just being the team idiot again.”

“It's okay, that’s part of what makes you cute.”

“What?”

“If you two want to stop flirting, we’ve got a mission to do.” Keith cuts in.

“We’re not-”

“I wasn’t-”

“Yeah, yeah. Allura? I’m guessing your silence means you recognize that code?”

“...yes.” She says after a moment. “It's an invitation to come closer.”

“We sure this isn’t a trap?” Hunk inquires.

“No, but that’s what we’re here for.” Shiro replies, giving a wave from the atlas.

“Not to mention that we can launch into Voltron at a moment’s notice.” Keith adds.

“If you say so…”

The Five Lions, with the Atlas just behind, approach the wreckage of the ship. As they grow closer they can see that the light is coming from a sizeable hole in the hull. A sole figure in a space suit stand in the hole, holding a device projecting the light.

“There’s our new friend.” Keith says.

Allura stares at the figure, her Lion hovering just a few dozen feet away. The figure turns off it's device and wave. Allura takes a breath and nods. “Alright I’m going down to meet. Alone.”

“But-”

“I don’t want to spook them. Please. If it's just me they’ll feel more comfortable.” She reasons.

Keith looks as though he might continue to object, but finally he sighs. “...fine. We’ll be right here if you need us.”

“Thank you, Keith.”

With that, Allura exits her Lion, floating out into the field. She activates her jet, moving towards the suited being. She enters the darkened opening, and lands on the cold metal of the floor.

The suited being touches a button on the side of it's helmet, causing it to turn translucent. It's Luca.

Allura’s stance relaxes, and she gives a slight smile. “Hello. I am Princess Allura, daughter of King Alfore, and Paladin of Voltron, and you have no idea how happy I am to meet you.” She offers her hand, trembling slightly from anticipation.

The other altean nods slightly. “I am called Luca, and the pleasure is mine.” She shakes Allura’s outstretched hand.

Allura hesitates, then sweeps her gaze across the darkened ship interior. “Where there not two others with you in the message?”

“Worry not. They are...nearby.”

“I see.” Allura said uncertain, but shaking off the ill-ease. “So then, please tell us how can we help you and the rest of your people.”

“That will take some time to explain…”

Though Allura does not see it, Luca taps a small button on her suit’s belt.

***

“What do you think they’re talking about?” Matt asks, from the bridge of the Atlas.

“The fate of an entire species, I’d guess.” Shiro says flatly.

“Oh good. Nothing too heavy, then.”

Shiro doesn’t laugh but he does crack a half-smile. “Just keep an eye on that scanner.”

“I know, I know. But it’s been all clear. There’s nothing, not a blip since we...wait a minute.”

Matt suddenly leans in close to his screen. “Uh oh.”

“We got company?”

“What do you think?”

Bursting out from behind a larger chunk of debris, flew two silver robeasts.

“Guys!” Shiro calls over the comm.

“I see ‘em!” Keith replies. “We’ve got to hold them back, Allura isn’t in her Lion!”

“I think we can do that…” Shiro says narrowing his eyes.

He drives the Atlas forward, barreling towards the two robeasts. He throws both hands forward blasting the robeast. They deflect the blasts with the spinning of their polearms. Then they are trading blows, two giant machines against one. The Lions are quick to support, however, blasting the robeasts from all angles, hindering their efforts.

***

Allura watches the machines clash. It is only a moment later when she turns pained eyes over to Luca.

Luca hold her gaze, unflinchingly. Allura opens her mouth as if to say something. She never gets the chance.

Out of a hidden panel in the side of the ruined ship comes the Dark Red Lion.

“Hello Princess.” Prince Lotor says, pulling his Lion above the hole in the ship. The Lion’s mouth opens.

Allura has only a moment to react.

“Look out!” She cries, shoving Luca backwards.

The Lion’s mouth blast hits the floor beneath Allura. A bust of energy erupts below Allura flinging her sailing backwards into a wall. She gasps struggling to maintain consciousness. The Lion reaches down again with an open mouth, but this time to swallow her into its hold.

“Trivial…” Lotor remarks.

However before he can get ahold of Allura something smashes into the side of his Lion. Lotor goes tumbling, but quickly rights his Lion. Keith in the Black Lion shoots towards him, wings activated. Moving too fast to dodge, the Blakc Lion smashes into Lotor’s for a second time.

“Did you think we’d go down that easy?” Keith asks.

“Not really.” Lotor sneers. “It's always something with you lot. Luca I’m a little...preoccupied. Secure the Princess for me...Luca?”

Luca is too busy staring over at Allura from where the Princess threw her, well clear of the blast. Struggling Allura rises, letting out a pained caught. She sets her gaze in on her Lion, which still waits in empty space, activates her suit’s booster and jumps for it.

“Luca!?” Lotor repeats.

“R-Right.” Luca struggles to tear an energy pistol from a hidden compartment in her suit. She takes aim at Allura, but hesitates.

“Stop her Luca!” Lotor shouts.

Luca fires. He shot misses the mark by several dozen meters. Allura slips safely inside her Lion.

“...sorry, I failed.” Luca reports.

Lotor sighs over the comm. “...plan B it is, then.”

***

Allura fires up her Lion’s engine and it bursts into motion.

“Sorry about the delay! I’m ready!”

“Alright then…” Keith and the other Paladins pull back away from the Lions. “...form Voltron!”

The five Lions assemble the mighty form of Voltron. Lance tears out the sword, and they charge at the robeasts.

***

Prince Lotor watches the shining form of Voltron attack his robeasts, and smiles.

“Raimon...activate the Komar.”

***

A panel on the top of the wrecked ship, revealing Raimon surrounded by the great metal arms of a machine, encircled by druids on platforms. Bolts of black and purple energy begin to strike between the druids. They begin to direct the increasingly violent energy at Raimon who stores it in a large orb between his palms. Finally the crackling shadow energy reaches it climax, and Raimon releases it.

The stream of black energy wreathed in violet light reaches out for Voltron and the Atlas. It snatches them inside the grips of twin tendrils of midnight.

“AHH!” Lance cries. “Wh-what is this!?”

“It's...the Komar!” Allura manages to get out.

“Here! H-how?”

“...i-it doesn't matter, it’ll drain Voltron!” Keith yells. “We’ve got to...t-to stop it some...somehow…” his voice fades with each breath.

“We’re not...doing much better!” Shiro reports, alarms going off all over the screens of the Atlas’ bridge. Matt frantically types away to little avail.

The energy slowly dies away, leaving Voltron and the Altas lightless and drained.

“C-come on guys we need to get Voltron back online.” Keith says panting. “Just...just like before...”

The Paladins struggle, but to little avail.

***

Lotor cackles with mad-laugher. “It worked! Raimon it really worked!”

“It did.” Raimon confirms. “However another shot is not possible.” he stands amidst several fallen druids. “This is not the original komar and the process drained too many of the druids.”

“We shall work quickly, then.” Lotor declares. “Finish this.”

The robeasts level both of their-staff blade and as one, swing at Voltron. Violet blades of energy slash, and the Paladins scream as Voltron shatters back into five Lions.

***

“We’ve got to do something!” Shiro yells, willing the Atlas to move.

“Well sorry to say but we’re about as useful as a boat in the desert!” Iverson grunts. “We’re operation off of our backupbattery’s auxiliary power. It's a miracle we still have oxygen, much less be able to fight!”

“Matt?” Shiro asks hopefully.

The boy is staring at the floor, thinking.

“...the engine.” He says carefully. “It's a dual cycle balmeran crystal system…” Matt’s eyes widen and he dashes to the back of the bridge, throwing open a service shaft.

“Where are you going?” shiro asks.

“To get this thing moving again. Or blow myself up. One of those.” And with that Matt is down the shaft.

***

Keith is helpless as he watches Lotor move his Lion right up to Allura’s and grabs hold of its neck. Keith throws his throttles back and forth to little avail.

The robeasts close in to grab the remaining Lions.

Keith closes his eyes, gripping his controls tightly. “Come on Black…”

***

Matt hangs on the side of a mechanical sphere with countless wires and cables spreading out from it. He tears open a panel, exposing two large crystals within parallel fixtures. Matt puts his feet on the lip of the panel and extends his staff. He takes a breath.

“Really hope this doesn’t kill me.”

Then he wedges the staff behind the fixture of one of the crystals and starts to pull. He heaves. “Come on you…”

The crystal in it's fixture suddenly lurches into movement, slamming into the other crystal. There is a spark of blue energy. The crystals start to glow. Matt grins, then as the crystals glow brighter, he swears and leaps away from the panel.

A blast of blue light erupts where he stood a moment ago. A blue fire continues to rage from the panel. Matt kicks the panel close and lets out a sigh of relief.

“That’ll give us at least a few minutes, make it count!”

***

“Thank Matt, we’re back!” Shiro exclaims, lights all along the Atlas coming back on.

He lauches the Atlas into motion, pulling back it's fist for a wild punch. The nearest robeast barely has time to rear back before the Atlas slams it's fist into the mecha’s face. The robeast spins backwards, while the other brings it's weapon up to face the Atlas. The Atleas lets out a pair of blasts from its hands. The robeast blocks with a spin of it's staff but is pushed backwards. Four Lions hang in space between them.

“...retreat.” Lotor finally says, pulling his Lion back, Blue still held in it's jaws. “I will not risk my prize...”

***

“Come on…” Keith urges, squeezing the throttles even more tightly.

Outside, the Atlas tries to reach Lotor’s Lion but is intercepted and thrown back by the robeast. They fire arm blasts at the Atlas, doing little damage, but keeping the other mecha distracted.

Keith struggles to ignore it all. He takes a long deep breath. Then another. Then another. Suddenly, Keith opens his eyes. The Black Lion’s eyes shine as it bursts back to life. Keith immediately throws both throttles forward, causing the Lion to explode into motion.

He races for the Dark Red Lion, pursuing at blinding speed. The robeasts start to move to block Keith.

“You aren’t getting away with her…” Keith says narrowing his eyes. He drives his throttes as far as they’ll go. The Black Lion’s wings appear, and it easily races past the two robeast. Keith is a split-second away when Lotor spins his Lion around and activates it's cannon.

The only thing Keith has time to do is widen his eyes. The blinding blast takes Keith dead center, rocketing Keith back into a massive chunk of debris. The metal cracks and warps as The Black Lion gets buried into the mass.

“Not-” Keith coughs. “-not done...yet!” he throws his throttles forward one more time, only to be struck by yet another blast. Keith looks up to see the Dark Blue Lion blasting Black with ice, cementing it in place.

“Better luck next time Paladin.” Lotor says, as the two Lions turn to leave, followed by the robeasts.

The Atlas makes as if to follow, but a shudder from deep within it's core, signals that the machine has reached its limit.

Keith can only watch, beaten, as their enemies disappear into the distance, taking Allura with them.

***

“Sire, Prince Lotor and Raimon are approaching.” Senak says. “Lotor sent only a short message ahead: I have one of them.”

Emperor Zarkon, staring out at the altean colony, smiles. “Tell them to land on the surface. I want to see this.”

***

Lotor drops the Blue Lion onto the scarred surface of the colony moon. He lands his own Lion with one claw onto Blue’s back, ensuring that it will go nowhere. Finally the mouth of his own Lion pops open and Lotor climbs out. Raimon lands his Lion just behind, exiting a moment later.

Zarkon stands on the cracked ground, waiting. Sendak and Honvera are just behind him. Lotor and Zarkon gaze at each other for a tense moment.

But then, Lotor bows his head, and lowers himself to one knee. “...father, I bright before you the enemy’s Blue Lion and it's Paladin.”

“I see.” Zarkon says, impassive. “Show me this Paladin.”

Lotor glances over at the Blue Lion. “I suspect that she will save us the trouble of waiting…”

As if on cue the Blue Lion’s mouth opens and Allura leaps out, bayard transforming into a spear. With furious eyes she makes as if to charge at Lotor. The sight of Zarkon stops her dead in her tracks. She freezes, resolve sputtering as she took in the sight of the emperor.

“...Zarkon.”

“Emperor, to you.” Zarkon says, a rare smile touching his lips. “So the daughter of Alfor lives in this reality. Princess you have no idea just how...fascinating it is to see you.”

His gaze sweeps over Lotor, then Raimon. “You two did well.”

Lotor hesitates. “...I must confess, I had hoped to capture all five of the Paladins as well as their Lions. I cannot claim this as a total success.”

“Indeed.” Zarkon agrees. “But this will have to do. After all Voltron cannot be formed with even one Lion missing.”

“Yes!” Lotor says perking up. “And I’m certain her comrades will attempt a rescue!”

“Of course. A prime opportunity for a trap. You have done well Lotor.”

“Thank you...father.” Lotor replies with more than a hint of pride.

Allura, regaining some of her composure, narrows her eyes at Zarkon. “You will not trap my friends so easily. They are clever and brave and strong. All the things you pretend to be.”

Zarkon lets out a hollow laugh. “Your friends will be blinded by desperation. That will make them easy to manipulate. And I do not much care how clever or brave you think I am not. But…” Zarkon narrows his eyes and takes a step forward. “...do not ever question my strength. Or you will find it's the last mistake you make. You live by my mercy. Now hand over your bayard, or I’ll have it taken from you.”

Allura grits her teeth and stares down Zarkon. She doesn’t break her hateful even as she deactivates her bayard and shoves it at Lotor. The Prince snatches it, looking bemused.

“Good. So she does know how to follow orders from a better.” Zarkon turns his back. “We’ll go now. I want to show something to Alfor’s heir.”

Zarkon starts walking without further word, Honvera and Sendak following. Lotor smirks at Allura before turning to follow his father as well. Allura’s gaze turns out to the landscape as if considering making a break for it.”.

“Do not run.” A gruff voice says from behind.

Allura turns to face Raimon, staring at her through his dark helmet.

“Who are you then? I know all of Zarkon other lackeys. Were you never important enough in our reality?” She sneers. “Then again maybe you are someone under that helmet. Does Zarkon make you wear it or are you just that ashamed of showing your true self?””

“I am a servant of the Emperor. Nothing more.” Raimon says simply in his gruff tone.

Allura’s eyes narrow further. “I have you to thank for blasting me before, don’t I? When I was opening teleduv. You were piloting that lion that hit me.”

“I do what the the Emperor requires of me.”

“And I don’t suppose thinking for yourself is involved anywhere in there?”

“No.” He says flatly, and shoves her forward. “Move. You are keeping the Emperor waiting.”

Allura shakes her head disdainfully, but starts walking.

***

“Behold Princess, your people.” Zarkon waves a hand over the sight before them. They stand on the edge of a platform overlooking the altean colony. Even from this high the forms of individual alteans can be seen, walking, working, training. The statue of Lotor stands above them all.

Allura takes in the scene looking both amazed and horrified. Her eyes are glued to the people of the colony and she reaches out a hand as if to touch the distant forms.

“...it hurts doesn’t it?” Zarkon says leaning down next to her. “Being so close to your people but unable to help them.”

Allura steps back disgust on her face. “Save your jabs Emperor Zarkon. You only destroy pure things like them to make yourself feel powerful. Because you hate that there’s a void inside you that will never let you care for people like I do.”

Zarkon chuckles throatily. “It must be easy, thinking of your enemies as incapable of things like love.”

“What have you ever loved besides yourself?” Allura demands.

Zarkon turns narrowed, glowing eyes on her. “I loved Diabazaal.”

Allura is caught off-guard by the answer.

“It was hard, abrasive, and cold.” Zarkon goes on. “And it was home. And your father took it from me.”

“He saved the universe-”

“He was a coward!” Zarkon suddenly shouts. “Too scared of progress to let it run its course!”

“Just because your arrogance and lust for power-”

“Lust for power!?” Zarkon bellows, he leans in very close to Allura, and when he next speaks he is quiet. “I went into that energy field to save my wife. Because of your father I came out homeless. But I’ll tell you one thing, I did change that day. I would never let anyone take one of my possessions ever again. Not one of my planets, not one the people that belong to me and most certainly not Voltron. You think I only care about power? You’re right. I tried friendship and compassion, and I learned that trusting someone to your back only gives them a better position to shove a knife in. Power is what I trust in, Princess. Because my own power is the one thing that has never failed me.” He lets out a bark of a laugh. “You want those alteans? You should have been strong enough to take them from me. But you aren’t you’re weak, just like them.”

Allura clenches her fists struggling for a retort. “Perhaps I haven’t beaten you. Perhaps I can’t. Not alone. But I’m stronger because of my comrades. My friends. My family. We will beat you because we believe in lending strength to each other. While you’re just alone.”

“Alone?” Zarkon smiles. “Do I look alone?” He spreads a hand across the other Dark Paladins, “As far as I see, you are the only one alone here. Even they are with me.” He waves another hand to the alteans below.

“They only serve you because of either fear or lies!”

“And why do people serve you and the other Paladins, Princess?

“B-because we’re fighting for freedom and peace!”

“Freedom and peace…” Zarkon shakes his head. “You’re not different than them.” he gestures to the alteans. “Look at them. If I asked them what do you think they’d say? They believe in a noble and just cause, and are willing to fight and die for it. For freedom and peace. but it's a lie. All a lie. Your cause is the same, but since your stupid like them, you just haven’t realised it yet.”

“No, you’ve just twisted their good intentions to your ends.”

“And what does that matter? I did it because I could If you could turn them against me you’d do it in a heartbeat, would you not?”

Allura starts to speak but her voice catches. Zarkon shakes his head once more.

“Pathetic. Just like your father. Always spouting rhetoric, never committing to it. In the end he only did what was good for himself, just like me.”

“My father was not like you!” Allura nearly screams.

“You're right! Because if he was like me he’d have been strong enough to stop me! But he was weak, just like you’re weak. That’s all this comes down to. You can’t beat me, because you don’t have the power to do it.” Zarkon sighs, shaking his head once again. “...and now I think I’ve grown bored of this conversation. I have to plan how best to crush your friends without them slipping away again. Show the Princess to somewhere out of the way where my ears won’t be disgraced by her voice.”

Zarkon turns his back to her and starts walking away. Lotor motions for her to follow him in the opposite direction. Allura starts to follow Lotor then stops, looking back down at the alteans, then over to Zarkon. Finally she looks back at Lotor, or more specifically, the bayard at his belt. She closes her eyes and concentrates. The bayard becomes energy and reforms in her hand.

“How’s this for strength?” She shifts the bayard into a spear and launches herself at Zarkon’s back. The spearhead is inches from the Emperor’s back when it is knocked aside by Raimon’s blade. The Dark Paladin stands there, longsword outstretched, as firm as stone.

Zarkon turns back around, smiling. “I was hoping you would try that.” He holds up a hand staying Lotor, Honerva and Sendak, who’d been moving to restrain her. “Do not interfere. Tell you what Princess, if you beat Raimon, you can leave a free woman.”

“Father-” Lotor begins to object.

“-Quiet. This is something I dearly want to see.”

“Fine. But once I’m done with him, I’ll take you down too, Zarkon.” Allura says not taking her eyes off Raimon.”

“You’re free to try.”

Without further prompt Allura thrusts her spear at Raimon’s head. He knocks the spear aside and kicks her backwards. Allura stumbles back, but quickly rights herself. Narrowing her eyes at Raimon, she launches a series of attacks against the man. Raimon deflects and turns away all of her strikes, never so much as taking a step back. Allura grows more determined, he thrusts becoming a blur as she assaults Raimon’s guard from every angle. Once again, Raimon efficiently blocks every single strike.

Allura makes as if to thrust once more, but at the last second, pulls back shifts her bayard into the energy whip and lashes it at Raimon’s head. He ducks low, the energy whip triling overhead. Raimon replies by throwing out one hand, and firing a bolt of blue quintessence.

Allura’s eyes widen and she barely manages to get a hand up in time. Quintessence crackles against her hand, and she stumbles back, nearly falling. Raimon lowers his hand, the glow fading from it.

“You’re altean.” She says with narrowed eyes.

“Oh he’s much more than that.” Zarkon says.

“It doesn’t matter. You serve Zarkon of your own will, so I’ll stop you.”

Zarkon laughs.

“Something funny?”

“Nothing, nothing. Don’t let me interrupt your fight.”

Allura lashes her whip at Raimon again, this time going low. The Dark Paladin jumps over the whip, but Allura doesn’t stop there. She continues to lash the whip over and over, forcing Raimon to duck dodge and weave around the glowing tether. Just as it looks like her whip will hit Raimon dead center he pulls his sword up and the whip wraps around the blade. Allura tries to pull the whip back, but Ramion yanks his sword back at the same time, winning the battle of leverage. Allura goes stumbling forward, right into Raimon’s waiting fist. She hits the ground, dazed.

“Enough.” Raimon says quietly, looming over her.

“Never.” Allura growls leaping back up. She shifts her bayard back into a spear and thrusts it at Raimon’s chest. He knocks the spear aside, but Allura lets go with one and and thrusts it palm-first up at his face. Raimon catches her by the forearm easily.

Allura however, smiles, then takes a breath. Blue quintessence crackles from her fingers and blasts Raimon in the head. Sparks fly and the now-cracked helmet flies across the room.

Allura smiles with self satisfaction. Then her smile fades and her eyes widen. Allura stumbles back, as if struck. Her mouth opens and closes, taking several excruciating moments to form the word caught in her throat.

“...father?”

No longer concealed by the helmet, the face of King Alfor stares back at Allura.

“...I am no one’s father.” He says monotone. He stares at her but there is no light behind his eyes. “My daughter is long dead.”

The last thing Allura sees is her father’s fist swinging towards her face, accompanied by the sound of Zarkon laughing.

#voltron #voltron legendary defender #voltron season 8 #kallura #allura #keith #plance #lance #pidge #fix it fic #king alfor #hunk #lotor #prince lotor #voltron season eight #rewrite #got nothing better to do #but actually i do

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void-tiger · 5 years ago

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Kolivan and his Blades of Galra Rebels were such a cool idea and design.

...too bad they were executed so poorly.

(Even for a group of Spies Primary, they didn’t play nice with others, and they withheld information from their alliance that quite literally crippled them (the s2 Finale regarding “go bait oh wait Thace hasn’t checked in...let’s bail now that we’ve got Zarkon coming~” and the freaking Komar not mentioned until after it blasts the Paladins) (attacking the KralZera and turning it into a shitshow without saying “hey don’t go we’re already planning something” ...which why didn’t a Blade stand in as a candidate again?); and Kolivan was trying to poach a Paladin away from Voltron since his introduction then finally succeeded in s4. That...and I don’t really have any respect for “TopDown, Shutup and Do What I Say NOW, You’re all Pawns” styled leadership which...is how Keith “grew as a leader” when monsantos finally got their way with “bpkeef”. Oh...and KOLIVAN was the one to insist on a new Pilot for the BlackLion? Yet he kept poaching Keith away.)

...right.

Galra Rebels/Spies were SO badass and I love their design and voice acting and just their entire aesthetic.

But their writing? Including in The Golden Seasons?

It’s SO broken.

So...fix their writing in an AU, I guess. Then they’re fine.

(And I’m really not a fan of anything about Krolia’s character, either.)

#vld salt #bom crit #not going to tag individual characters to keep it out of those tags #...but I haven’t really seen much (if any) crit about the BoM as an organization and how they relate back to Voltron/the plot #once more Rule of Cool strikes again #as...so clearly monsantos just didn’t get how leadership actually works (including a more secretive one)#spies have to be secretive. I’m not critiquing that.#but the rules change once you collaborate and pool your resources together #so yes. I am blaming Kolivan for WHY ‘Slav’s Odds’ ended up that way #(that and the BlackLion panicked after already getting blasted by that komar earlier that fight)#(and once again in a tugawar because Zarkon)#and depending on the op? yeah you do go back after your men KOLIVAN #this wasn’t Thace and Ulaz who were in solo undercover #you were leading a group. different rules.#(and wth was with Krolia’s ‘training’ in s7? I swear every Blade had serious depression from It’s Futile.)#(which made them ready to die? but you LOST TRAINED AGENTS that way. and that’s expensive)

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naruwitch · 5 years ago

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Code Geass: Paladins of Voltron Chapter 12: Taking Flight

"Sire, if capturing Voltron is the Empire's number-one priority, then I suggest we begin moving the main fleet toward its last known location posthaste." The Galran commander said as he knelt boldly before his leader. It was Prorok, a proud Galra that was currently stationed at the Galra's main fleet. Ambitious and loyal to the bone, he did everything in the name of Zarkon for his best interests, even if it meant taking matters into his own hands.

To Prorok's disgust, though, the witch turned to the Emperor and presented her own course of action. "Lord, after many years, the Komar Experiment is finally ready. Soon, we could have more quintessence at our fingertips than ever imagined. We must test it before moving the fleet."

Prorok rose in defiance, "We don't have time for any more of your magic. We must move our ships now." The Emperor must see that this was the perfect opportunity to take Voltron.

"Voltron is the most powerful weapon ever created," Haggar argued, "His puny ships will never be up to the task. We must be well prepared for our next encounter."

Zarkon slammed his hands against the arms of his throne, and Prorok took a step back in surprise before immediately kneeling again.

"I know better than anyone the power of Voltron. Haggar has my trust. We will perform her test," he decided.

Seeing that there was no more point in arguing, Prorok rose to his feet and stormed out of the room. He met up with one of the Galra officers he was over, Thace, a quiet but loyal Galra, in the hall away from the throne room.

"The witch has his ear. Keep sending our offer out to any scum between Planet Arus and Balmera X-95-Vox. I'll capture Voltron on my own."

o~o

"Okay. So, when we get there, what do you think? Do we just roll up and like, start blasting? Or do we land and have some kind of... public address system, like, 'Attention, Galras. This is Voltron. Turn yourselves in!' No, nevermind. Blasting, right?" Shirley asked as she paced anxiously with the rest of the Paladins sitting on the steps below her. She had no idea how a rescue mission was supposed to go. Not to mention this would be Voltron's first official mission, several things could go wrong. She was almost having an anxiety attack when Kallen gently interrupted her.

"Shirley, calm down. And yes, blasting."

"Shirley, it's okay for you to be nervous," Rai reassured her, "it's our first big mission, a rescue mission even. Everything's going to be alright."

"Nervous? I think she's more excited," Rivalz grinned.

"Excited to see her new BFF!" Milly sang as she tipped her head to wink at the Orange Paladin.

Shirley looked like she wanted to protest when unusual alarms started going off in the ship. They didn't sound like the emergency ones, though.

"What's happening? Are we under attack?" Lelouch asked urgently.

"No, it seems to be a distress beacon," Coran informed them as a small red triangle appeared on his and Allura's screens.

"It's coming from a nearby moon," Allura confirmed, "Apparently, a ship has lost power."

"I wonder who it is?" Suzaku wondered.

"Okay, well, whoever it is will have to wait," Shirley insisted, "The Balmerans have first priority. We can check back on them when we're done."

"The Paladin Code states that we must help all those in need," Allura chastised.

"Wow! This is so cool," Rivalz exclaimed, "It's like we're space cops on space patrol. Coran, do we have a siren we can turn on?"

"Uh, no, we don't," Coran admitted.

"Well, we could record you making a siren noise and broadcast that to them if you'd like," C.C. suggested with a mischievous glint in her eyes.

"Perfect!" The Blue Paladin started to make some pretty lousy siren noises before Lelouch pinched Rivalz lips shut.

"Nope, not doing that!"

o~o

It didn't take long for the Castleship to approach the moon in question. Seated around a small bond-fire were two aliens, a little robot, supplies, and a decent-sized ship that looked like it had been worn out through many battles.

"Attention, damaged craft, this is Princess Allura. We are coming to assist you." The six towers folded in on themselves, and the castle turned upright with more fluidity than any Knightmare or aircraft on Earth could ever achieve. It slowly and gracefully lowered to the ground next to the crew.

One of the aliens, a humanoid alien, with four fingers instead of five. He was tall with muscular arms, mauve skin, and purple spots. He had lank white hair and some pre-pubescent facial scruff. He also had downturned eyes and a cartoonishly straight nose.

"Whoa. Nice ship."

o~o

"Stay aboard and try to get as many of our systems clear of that Galra crystal energy as you can. We'll see who hailed us," Allura informed Coran and C.C. as she and the Paladins all prepared to meet the lost aliens.

"Yes, Princess," Coran nodded while C.C. shrugged. She might as well learn how a few of the things worked on the castle. Two pairs of hands were better than one after all.

o~o

They didn't take any of the Lions down to greet the strangers. Instead, the team descended to the ground in a small elevator shuttle. The doors opened to reveal the Princess and the entirety of Team Voltron as a whole. As they exited and approached the stranded party, the purple skin leader grinned, holding a wrench-like device in his hands.

"You don't know how glad we are to see some friendly faces. Most folks don't want to get tangled up with anyone who's on the run from the Galra."

"So, you're fighting the Galra as well?" Milly asked. However, almost immediately upon exiting the pod, her student council president senses perked up. Something felt wrong to the Yellow Paladin. She couldn't put her finger on it, but something was off.

"Well, I don't think Zarkon is exactly quaking in his boots at the three of us," he gestured to the robot and his female comrade, "but we do what we can. I'm Rolo. This is Nyma, and our cyber-unit, Beezer."

"Hi," Nyma smiled. She was a tall alien with pointy ears, cream and yellow skin, and blonde hair with two brown stripes at her forehead. Her eyes were light purple with darker purple pupils and sclera. Her lower arms were slightly larger than her upper arms, and she had three fingers on each hand.

Rai's eyes nearly bugged out of his head at the sight of the robot. That was probably one of the coolest pieces of machinery he'd ever seen! "Cool robot!"

Rivalz was wholly enraptured with Nyma as he immediately shook her hand and introduced himself, "Hi! Name's Rivalz!"

"Was your ship damaged in a fight?" Suzaku asked Rolo.

"Yeah, we've really been through it with the Galra. Parts are hard to come by," the purple alien explained as he looked back at the ship, "Luckily, we were able to limp to this moon about a week ago. If you didn't pick up our distress signal, I didn—"

"We're happy to help," Allura interrupted him, "I am Princess Allura of Altea, and from now on, you won't be alone fighting the Galra. You'll have the Paladins of Voltron by your side."

Rolo rubbed his chin and looked back and forth between the two groups. Lelouch, Suzaku, Milly, and Kallen were standing next to Allura at the ready. A hint of light even shined off Lelouch's helmet. On the other hand, behind Rolo, Rai was still examining Beezer with Shirley crouched next to the robot with a small smile. Meanwhile, Rivalz was again flirting with Nyma, who giggled at a remark the Blue Paladin made.

"...Okay," Rolo replied dryly, not really sounding impressed.

"I don't believe they've heard of us," Lelouch said.

"Well, it has been 10,000 years," Kallen muttered the remark.

"Voltron? Seven robot Lions that combine into this big robot... person?" Shirley tried to explain.

"Sounds impressive," Rolo said, "I'd love to see it. Or—Or him. Them?"

"Alright, enough chit-chat!" Milly proclaimed, clapping her hands twice, "Let's get to work on your ship. We all have places to go and people to see."

"You know how to fix spaceships, Milly?" Suzaku asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, my family does own the Ganymede, and therefore I know it's maintenance and function. This should at least be a little similar, at least the basics anyway." Milly didn't mention that she'd also binged, with the help of a translator, a couple of manuals she'd found on the ship while they were waiting for Rivalz to wake up from cryo-sleep.

"I can help too," Kallen said, "I've had to repair Knightmares from scratch before. Two sets of eyes are better than one too." Milly nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, sure," Rolo agreed as he leads the two of them to the ship.

"Pretty much our whole flaxum assembly is shot," he explained as he opened one of the hatches, "I don't know what kind of extra parts you carry in this rig of yours. I've never seen anything quite like it."

"I'm sure we can get you back up and running," Allura smiled. In the background, Rivalz was attempting to flex his muscles for Nyma, who giggled at his efforts. Milly was watching the pair very suspiciously.

"Give Kallen and Milly a list of what you need. Coran can show you where to find it." Allura told Rolo then gestured to the two women.

"Okay," Kallen shrugged.

"We'll go with you," Rolo said, "Don't want you ladies carrying all that yourselves. Come on, guys."

Rolo started walking towards the Castle when Milly planted herself right in front of him with her hands on her hips.

"Uh, yeah, I don't think so. You can just wait out here."

"Milly, don't be rude!" Allura said sternly.

"Yeah, mind your manners," Rivalz said, "you're giving a bad impression!" He grinned apologetically at Nyma.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, but does anyone remember the last time we let our defenses down?" Milly asked, with a frown and narrowed eyes, "Someone kind of set off a bomb. Remember, Rivalz? You were almost killed."

"Oh… yeah," Rivalz wilted a little at the memory.

"Milly's right," Lelouch nodded, "apologies, but we must exercise caution. This is our first meeting, after all."

"Hey, I don't take it personal," Rolo said with a smile. Beezer rolled forward and printed off a list of materials, which Rolo handed to Milly and Kallen, "That's how it is out here. You've got to look out for your own. You're doing a good job."

"Yeah, thanks," Milly frowned as she looked between the list and the alien.

o~o

"My planet was destroyed by the Galra, and I was taken captive," Rolo explained as he, Lelouch, Suzaku, Shirley, and Allura, as they all sat around the fire. "I managed to escape, but not before I lost something," he pulled up his pant leg to reveal a metal prosthetic leg.

"I'm so sorry," Shirley murmured. She glanced back behind Rolo to see that Rai was still playing with and examining Beezer. She wondered, even though most of his memories were gone, whether the Green Paladin felt the same way.

"Well," Kallen called out as she and Milly lugged a large storage box out, "I hope there are some parts in here that will fit."

Rolo glanced back but made no move to join them.

Milly scowled, "...You know, to get your ship moving?"

Rolo smiled and waved back, "Great! Thanks!"

"So, what can you tell us about Zarkon's forces?" Allura asked, drawing Rolo's attention again, "Where are they concentrated?"

"Well, his Command Ship sits right in the center of the Empire. He mostly calls the shots from there and has his minions do the work, depending on who's closest. This is the territory of a real nasty bugger named Sendak."

"Oh, trust us, we've met," Suzaku frowned.

"How far are we from the center?" Lelouch asked, leaning forward.

"We're way out on the fringes," Rolo said. Before he could say anything else, Milly roughly cleared her throat and walked to the group, with her arms crossed.

"Hey, sorry to interrupt, but I think you guys are kind of keeping Rolo from working. Didn't you remember we're supposed to be in a hurry? Shirley kind of has a promise she needs to keep."

"Yeah," the Orange Paladin nodded, standing up, "someone named Shay saved my life, and I told her I'd come back to help her and her people. You understand, don't you?"

"Sure. Sorry," Rolo said, as he passed Milly by. The Yellow Paladin pursed her lips and glared after him. Yup, these people were up to something all right.

As Rolo started looking through the parts, Lelouch walked up to Milly, "You've noticed too, huh?" he said lowly.

"Yeah. Sorry for the attitude Lulu, but I don't trust these people at all," Milly whispered back.

"Neither do I, but we can still use this opportunity to gain valuable intelligence on the enemy. Just keep your guard up."

"Got it," she nodded before glancing at Rolo again. She turned back to the prince. "Honestly Lulu, I think we should just leave the parts here and let him take care of-"

"Hey ma'am," Rolo called over to Milly, "Sorry, but do you think you could hunt down a length of thermal pipe, about yay long?" he held out his hands to show the measurement.

"I can do it," Kallen said as she ran back to the castle for the part, "be right back!"

As Kallen went to get the part, Lelouch walked up to Rolo again, "So are there more freedom fighters? Any kind of organized resistance to the Galra?"

"Only folks who haven't been colonized yet, or the lucky few, like us, who managed to escape somehow," the alien said.

"Well, we're going to change all that, very soon," Suzaku informed him as he walked up to them with Allura, Shirley, and Milly.

"That's good to hear," Rolo smiled, "but I've got to warn you, it's pretty bad out there. You don't know what you're up against."

o~o

"I mean, there are only seven of us in the entire universe, so…" Rivalz said as he kept talking the Nyma, "I guess you could say it's kind of a big deal."

"I don't understand," Nyma confessed, "The Lions are ships? Are they, like, flying statues that you ride on?"

"Oh, no, no, no. They're magic, but also super scientific and advanced," Rivalz explained, "And they fly crazy fast and have all these incredible weapons. Really, the entire castle is just insane! I wish you could see it."

"Yes, it's too bad we're not allowed inside. I would love a tour from one of the knights," Nyma said with a small smile, "But I guess the yellow one is in charge, huh? You have to obey her orders?"

"Who, Milly? Pfft, maybe at school I do, but not out here!" he grabbed Nyma's arm and enthusiastically led her inside the castle.

The two arrived at the command deck with no problem. "This place is incredible!" Nyma gasped.

"Yeah, I guess," Rivalz shrugged casually, "You get used to it."

"But it's so gigantic. It must take you forever to get to your Lion," Nyma said.

Rivalz just smirked, "Oh, you'd be surprised."

Soon the two of them were laughing gleefully as they slid down the zip line. Rivalz blushed the entire time as Nyma gripped his chest tightly. It didn't take long for the two to be in the Blue Lion's cockpit. Nyma looked around as the interior lit to life.

"Pretty slick, right?" Rivalz grinned.

"Unbelievable!" Nyma exclaimed, before turning to the Paladin, "Take me on a ride around the moon?"

Though Rivalz was flattered with the offer, he knew that Lelouch probably wouldn't approve of it, "Uh—We should probably get back to the others."

"Yeah, you're right," Nyma sighed, "Maybe Rai will give me a ride."

Upon hearing this, Rivalz completely changed his mind, "No! Whoa, whoa, hold on a second!" Rivalz stretched out and pressed a few buttons, activating the engines, "I mean what's the point of having the Lion if you can't enjoy it, right? Giddy-up, girl!" he exclaimed as the Lion zoomed out of its bay and rocketed into the sky.

Back down below, Kallen, Milly, and Rolo looked up just in time to see the Lion vanish.

"Ugh! Rivalz!" Kallen exclaimed in frustration.

"Ah, let them have their fun," Rolo said with a small smile, "Thanks to you two, this thing is just about ready, so we're going to be on our way soon. Too many light-years on that guy, I guess."

As Rolo returned to examining the ship, Milly couldn't help but narrow her eyes suspiciously at the part they just replaced. For some reason, it didn't look like it needed to be replaced entirely. Several other parts of the ship looked the same too, but Rolo had insistent on replacing them.

"Yeah... sure."

o~o

The Galra central command was hovering above a giant planet that looked to be flooded with beautiful trees and plants. But the Galra weren't here for that. No, what they sought was much more sinister.

From aboard the ship, the witch, Haggar, and her druids were floating on large platforms above. Haggar was positioned in the middle, with the other four druids surrounding her. Their platforms each had a Galran crystal underneath that began glowing a dark purple. Below them was a device merged in the center, right underneath Haggar.

"Begin the ritual," Haggar commanded, as a magic circle began to glow underneath her feet. Identical circles appeared under the others as well, "Druids of the Four Directions, join us!"

Pillars of purple energy hit Haggar's crystal, and the witch slowly guided it down past her in a vile form of dark magic. Upon being absorbed in her crystal, the energy hit the point where the merged device met, coloring it a wicked shade of black. The dark energy traveled up the pillars of the device until it hit the sides of the wall that supported it. They lit up in bright purple colors, creeping down towards the bottom where it sharpened to a point. Finally, the very bottom of Galra HQ erupted with a sphere of dark, black energy, almost the size of the base itself.

Down below on the planet, many animals minded their own business, nibbling at the plants and flowers for food. Suddenly, the flowers began to wither and die, streams of blue energy being sucked from them into the sky. The animals looked up in confusion but saw no cause for this phenomenon.

It didn't take long for the Komar to suck the planet completely dry of all of its bounteous quintessence, storing it within a large storage unit. The planet below them, once bright and vibrant, darkened until there was no sign of life left.

It was dead.

Haggar's platform rose above the others to meet the Emperor that had been watching from the deck above. The witch smiled triumphantly.

"The Komar Experiment was a success. We have gained an entire planet's quintessence, a feat that would have normally taken us years."

"Most impressive," Zarkon commented as he turned to face the storage unit holding the energy. "This will revolutionize the way we advance throughout the galaxy. Mining and colonizing planets is a thing of the past. With this much power available at our whim, we can now spend all of our time hunting down and capturing Voltron."

o~o

"Look! A kinetic spring!" Nyma pointed as the Blue Lion descended back to the water, "Let's land over there. The minerals reflect off the water, making a rainbow," the Blue Lion's back paws trailed within it, kicking up a mist that sparkled into a rainbow above.

"Wow. Is there anything you don't know?" Rivalz asked as he gazed at the beautiful sight.

However, while Rivalz wasn't looking, Nyma looking down at a band that she had around her wrist and clicked the button on it. It began to flash red rapidly.

o~o

Back with the rest of the Paladins, Rolo's band also began to glow red. The alien smirked rolled out from underneath the engine.

"I think this thing is just about ready for a test flight," he said as he closed the hatch, "Beezer, come co-pilot for me. Be back in a tick." the two of them rapidly disappeared inside, leaving most of the Paladins confused.

The ship's thrusters activated and easily lifted off the ground. It soared off towards its destination. The Blue Lion.

o~o

"So, ah, you want to see how fast I can climb this tree?" Rivalz asked with a smirk, leaning against the said tree.

Nyma giggled again, "Aw, you are cute. Let me show you something. Give me your hand."

Blushing, Rivalz held his hand out to the alien, only to suddenly be jerked forward and have something clasped over his wrists. He grunted as he was then slammed against the tree, as the cuffs around his hands emitted an energy beam that wrapped around the tree, effectively trapping the Blue Paladins.

As Nyma took a step back with a smile, Rivalz tried to move his hands, but they wouldn't budge a bit.

"Um… this is… kind of…" Rivalz said, an uneasy feeling suddenly rising in his gut. The rest of what he was going to say was interrupted as Nyma, and Rolo's ship appeared from above. Rivalz watched in horror as it sucked the Blue Lion inside. Rivalz could already hear her roaring and lecturing him for falling for such an obvious ploy as she disappeared inside.

"Nyma, what're doing?!" he asked desperately.

"Sorry, Rivalz. Maybe we'll meet again," she said as she was hoisted into the ship with a wire that extended down.

Rivalz only watched in terror as the ship turned and fired off into the sky and out of sight.

The Blue Paladin frantically looked around for something to either call for help or to get him out of his bonds, but all he found was his helmet that was sitting a couple of feet away.

"Oh, quiznack..."

o~o

Back with the rest of the group, they were still waiting for Rolo to return from his 'test flight,' perched on the supply and part crates they'd brought down. The longer it was, though, the more Lelouch got suspicious of something else happening.

"How many ticks have they been gone?" Rai asked.

"I don't know. I hope they didn't break down again," Allura said.

"Something's not right," Milly declared, her arms tightly folded.

o~o

Rivalz managed to slide his body almost entirely to the ground, and he strained with his foot to kick his helmet over to him. He wouldn't be able to put it on, but he knew that the others would still be able to hear him. He had to warn them, and the sooner they knew, the sooner they could go after the thieves.

It took him a couple of tries, but he finally managed to hook his toes under the glass visor and swing it over to his head.

Panting he called out into it the best he could, praying they could hear him, "Guys! Hello? Little help?"

o~o

Upon hearing the distressed call, all the Paladins put their helmets back on to listen to him properly.

"Rivalz? Rivalz! Are you all right? What's going on?" Lelouch asked urgently.

"Well, I'm kind of chained to a... a tree." they heard him say.

"I knew it!" Milly yelled, an angry scowl on her face.

"And I think Nyma and Rolo just stole the Blue Lion."

"I knew it!" Milly shrieked, throwing her arms down.

"Where are they?" Lelouch demanded, gritting his teeth in anger and frustration. He knew they shouldn't have trusted them! Now they had another problem on their platters.

"Uh… space?" Rivalz said helpfully.

"Oh! I never trusted those guys, right from the beginning!" Milly ranted. And she continued to do so all the way through the castle and to her Lion's bay.

"I mean, y'know, at first, it was just like a feeling in my gut, you know? But when Kallen and I were replacing that thermal pipe, the pipe was cracked, but none of the hardware around it was damaged."

"Okay! We get it!" Shirley shouted through the comms.

"I mean, if the thermal pipe is cracked, then, obviously, hello, the entire assembly should be totally roasted," Milly was on a roll in rants and showed no sign of stopping. At the same time, the other Paladins just meekly listened to her explanation. At the same time, though, they were all mildly impressed that she knew so much about machinery interiors.

"Okay, we get it!" Suzaku exclaimed through the comms.

"We should've had to replace the entire undercarriage of that reactor. So, right then, I was, like, positive. Foul play."

"Okay, we get it!" everyone, even Lelouch, shouted at her.

The six remaining Lions soon launched from the castle and took off in hot pursuit of their stolen sister.

o~o

"Commander Prorok, my name is Rolo," he said to the Galran on the screen, "I understand you're offering a reward to anyone helping capture the Voltron Lions."

"That's correct," the commander said, "do you know where they are?"

"I know where the blue one is. It's in my ship."

"Excellent," Prorok intoned, "Bring it to me, and you'll have your reward immediately."

"Just a tick. You see, my friends and I have a bit of a checkered past," the bounty hunter added. "Some stolen merchandise from the Galra Empire may have fallen into our possession without us knowing about it."

"Well, I'm sure that a full pardon can be arranged for the brave souls who bring Emperor Zarkon a Voltron Lion. Is that all?" he asked, somewhat impatiently.

"We'll take the reward too," Nyma confirmed.

"Of course," the commander nodded.

"All right, we're on our way," Rolo confirmed as the commander's face disappeared as the screen closed up.

Rolo stretched and cracked his knuckles as he leaned back in his chair, "I almost feel sorry for those Voltron folks. Seemed like a nice bunch."

"If you're feeling guilty, you can turn yourself in," Nyma frowned. "Stealing from Zarkon carries a life sentence."

"They don't seem… that nice," Rolo amends.

o~o

Onboard the command ship, Prorok turned to Thace again, having just finished his conversation with Rolo, "Send the nearest fighter squadron to the area of the transmission. I'm not trusting some bounty hunter with our prize."

o~o

Alarms started blaring in Rolo's ship as it continued to it's meet up point. Pulling up the feed, Rolo was shocked to see the other six Lions in hot pursuit of them. The Blue Paladin must've warned them somehow. It suddenly wasn't looking suitable for any of them.

"No way!" he gasped. He pulled up the stirring system and pressed a few more buttons. They had to shake them and fast!

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Nyma asked, "There's no way we can outrun those Lions."

"Not in the open. Good thing the Zorlar Asteroid Belt is right up here. I know that like the back of my hand," Rolo smirked as he zoomed towards the asteroid belt. They could quickly lose them in here… right?

o~o

The Lions screeched to a halt at the entrance of the belt. They could barely make out Rolo's ship as it moved farther away from them.

"We'll never get through his asteroid belt!" Rai exclaimed, flabbergasted.

"Maybe I can just bust through!" Shirley suggested.

"No, Shirley! Wait!" Suzaku called out in warning, but it fell on deaf ears. She and the Orange Lion raced forward, head lowered to charge through.

She did hit the asteroid. However, all it did was lazily bounce off another one behind it, causing it to bounce off another, and another, and another.

"Nope. That was wrong. That was a bad idea," she quickly deduced.

"Kallen, you're the only one who could possibly fly through this," Lelouch said, "We need you. Get in there and flush him out."

"Understood. See you on the other side!" the Red Paladin exclaimed.

As the other five Lions pulled out to go around, Kallen and the Red Lion zipped into the field, hunting for its prize. She smoothly spun around asteroids and debris as if she did it daily. They hopped from rock to rock fluently like a jungle cat, growing ever closer to the cargo ship.

The other Paladins could only watch in awe at Kallen's skill.

"I still can't believe that that's Kallen out there!" Shirley said.

"I know! It's like she's been flying all her life!" Rai agreed.

Lelouch from inside the Black Lion smirked, "Well, in the Black Knights, she's our number one ace pilot. In combat, she can easily use a Glasgow to take down several Sutherlands at once. She's a formidable foe and valuable member."

"Maybe a little too valuable?" Milly giggled with raised eyebrows.

Lelouch scowled and blushed, 'Damn you, she-devil!'

"You guys realize I can hear you, right?" Kallen asked through the comms, though she was blushing for an entirely different reason as she heard the praise that Zero gave her as she and the Red Lion ran along a rather long, narrow asteroid. A shadow fell overhead of them, and Kallen gritted her teeth as she drove her Lion to move faster to avoid the other asteroid about to collide with them. "Come on, Aka! We've got this!" With one final thrust of her controls, Aka shot out in between the rocks just as they crashed.

She smirked as she saw that she was now practically right on top of Rolo and his crew. They seriously didn't think they'd get away, did they?

o~o

"No way!" Rolo exclaimed as the camera showed the Red Lion, "Get on the blasters! Take her down!"

"Copy," Nyma said as she pulled up the controls with Beezer.

o~o

From on top of the ship, two blaster cannons elevated above. They started rapidly shooting in Kallen and Aka's direction.

Kallen saw them and gritted her teeth as she pulled up behind another asteroid. In retaliation, she had Aka shoot out some energy blasts of her own, each of them barely missing the cruiser.

From inside his ship, Rolo, despite the situation, couldn't help but smirk, "This chick can flat-out fly!"

Despite the multiple blasts, though, Kallen quickly began to close in on them.

"She's gaining on you!" Nyma shouted.

Rolo instinctively yanked the controls to the left. As the ship swerved out of the way, Kallen barely had time to stop herself as she narrowly avoided hitting another asteroid.

She gritted her teeth and pulled back on the lever, allowing Aka to activate her leg thrusters just in time. They leaped out from the rock, and with a smash of a button, Kallen activated Aka's jaw blade. With a swift swing of her head, the knife flew at the ship, burying itself in and destroying the two blaster cannons on Rolo's ship.

o~o

"Blasters are offline!" Nyma reported as the three crew members braced themselves with the turbulence.

"We gotta get out of here!" Rolo said as he fired the thrusters one last time, hoping for a last-ditch escape.

o~o

"Oh no, you don't!" Kallen yelled as Aka fired an on-point shot at one of the engines. It exploded, and the ship was soon spinning out of control. Red lights and alarms blazed as the crew inside held on for dear life. It began descending towards the planet just outside the asteroid belt. But before they could crash, Aka's claws gripped onto the ship. With a pull of the thrusters, the Lion and Paladin brought the crew to a stop in the middle of space.

Kallen grinned triumphantly as the five other Lions surrounded the ship.

"Yeah!" Kallen laughed, "Hey, Rivalz, I got your Lion back!"

"Thank you, Kallen," Rivalz said through the helmet, "Now, can you come and unchain me?"

"What's that? I, uh... Y-You're cutting out. I can't—I can't hear you," Kallen teased, even going as far as to make some static noises.

"Oh, come on!" The Blue Paladin exclaimed, "I thought we all bonded!"

o~o

With Kallen and Suzaku dragging the crew and their ship back to the moon, and Milly making a trip to rescue Rivalz, the Paladins and Allura now faced the thieves.

"Since your ship really doesn't work now, you'll have to wait here for a rescue," Suzaku said, disappointment in his tone.

"Thanks… for sparing our lives," Rolo said sincerely.

"You're welcome," Lelouch said, narrowing his eyes, "But… should we catch you doing something like this again, you won't be so lucky…" Lelouch understood why they did what they did, but that didn't mean he was happy about it.

Rolo gulped and nodded.

"Now that these guys are dealt with, can we go now?" Milly asked impatiently.

"Yeah, Shay and her family are still waiting for us," Shirley agreed.

"You may not believe this, but I hope you do stop Zarkon," Rolo confessed. "It's a lifetime of fighting the Galra that led me to where I am today."

At this statement, Lelouch's eyes lightened a little. He could only think of how many other rebels or criminals were thinking the same thing. What they needed more than ever was hope… and he knew just how to give it to them.

As the ship left the moon and the wayward thieves behind, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

"Hey, Kallen, was that that you called the Red Lion?" Rai asked.

"Oh!" Kallen blushed a little, "'Aka,' it means 'Red' in Japanese."

"You named your Lion?" Suzaku asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well… not really! I mean, it's just the color in a different language, I mean…" she stopped when she saw all the amused faces of the other Paladins, "Okay! Yes! I named her! Is that a problem?!"

"No, no!" Shirley shook her head with a giggle, "I think it's cute! Honest!"

"Hey! Maybe we all do that? Have the other Paladins done that Allura?" asked Milly.

"Well, no," Allura said but smiled, "but there's no rule saying that you can't."

"I think it's a good idea," C.C. spoke up, catching everyone's attention. "You keep talking about them building bonds with their Lions. By having names for them, it proves that they are being treated as equals, not just machines."

"I agree as well," Lelouch nodded, "having a name gives identity. You're not much without it."

"Great! Lion naming party!" Rivalz shouted.

"After we save the Balmera," Lelouch emphasized.

"Right, right!" Rivalz quickly agreed, leaving everyone laughing all over again.

o~o

Haggar held the container of quintessence in her palm as she and her druids surrounded the test subject. After the last one failed, she was more determined to make good on her promise to her Emperor and make a weapon that not even Voltron could stand up against, and she believed that she found the perfect subject.

"All this Quintessence will turn you into the strongest, most horrifying fighter ever created. One that even Voltron will not be able to defeat."

o~o

Omake:

Lelouch and Kallen were tasked to clean and fix the damage that was caused during Sendak's invasion. It was a dirty job but, someone had to do it.

Rover was there to help with schematics and which parts needed repairs.

"Why we got to do this?" Kallen grumbled, patching a hole, "A highly advanced castle without any droids or robots to fix the problems. I can't imagine how we're going to fly this thing during battle."

"That I don't know, Kallen," Lelouch answered with a sigh, "This is something Coran probably knows since he knows this castle up and down."

Both of them continued in silence. It was awkward, leaving the two of them together. Ever since Kallen found out Lelouch was the leader of the Black Knights, Zero, she felt a tingling of betrayal inside her. Finding out the man you admired and respected turned out to be an exiled Britannian prince.

However, after hearing his explanation and seeing his memories, she understood why he rebelled. Like her, both of them lost someone important because of Britannia's cruelty and corruption.

She understood why he needed to hide his face. If Ohgi, the others, and the rebel forces knew, they might have tried to ransom Lelouch to free Japan. But that would have been impossible. If the Emperor was willing to abandon his children to the Lion's den, she doubted he was ready to negotiate.

Sure, during Sendak's invasion, they bonded, but knowing the truth was different, and it felt awkward for both of them. Even Lelouch could felt it.

So she decided to break the silence. "You know, Lelouch, I never actually thought in my life that we would be the first humans to meet alien life and journey into space on a giant, advanced robot Lion."

"Yeah, it's mind-boggling that there are other lifeforms farther than our Solar System. And piloting a giant, robot Lion that makes Knightmares look like small chew toys," Lelouch chuckled. Though, he would love to see the Lancelot try and go up against Voltron. They could merely crush it if he wanted to.

"I want to apologize for accusing you of lying to me earlier." Of course, she didn't speak it out loud, but she needed to get it off her chest somehow, and this was the right time and away from prying eyes, especially Milly.

"About me being Zero and an exiled prince?" It was no surprise that she distrusted him for lying to her, but like him, she wanted to get it off of her chest, like how he confessed to everyone that he was Zero.

"Yes, it's just that I never thought something that terrible happened to you and your sister. Being forced into exile to an unknown land."

"No need to apologize, I was glad she was blind. Thank the small mercies she couldn't see what I've seen," Kallen didn't need to guess what that meant.

"Still, if you have problems, don't hesitate to call for help. We all are here with you as a team, you don't have to act like Zero all the time."

"Thank you, I'm glad to have met you, Kallen, first."

The redhead blushed that Lelouch thanked her. Sure, it wasn't some kind of confession, but still, it made her heart skip a bit. Then she saw Rover who saw everything.

"Rover, you didn't record anything, did you?" the droid turned around, not looking at her and making some kind of noise that sounded like a whistle.

"Coran, how are Lelouch and Kallen doing with the repairs?" Allura was drinking some tea in the kitchen.

"They should be finished right about-"

"Get back here you droid! When I get my hands on you, I'll make you a scrap!" Kallen shouting along with Lelouch following from behind.

"I think that's a 'No.'"

#Fanfiction #AU #Code Geass #Voltron #lelouch lamperouge #c.c.#suzaku kururugi #kallen kozuki #shirley fenette #milly ashford #rivalz cardemonde #rai (lost colors)#princess allura #coran #galra empire

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kcwcommentary · 5 years ago

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VLD8x06 – “Genesis”

8x06 – “Genesis”

I’ve watched this whole series, so I know I’ve seen this episode before, but going into this rewatch, I totally didn’t remember what this episode is about. Like, at all. The title “Genesis” makes no sense. I guess it’s being used to mean a beginning, but nothing is beginning in this episode. Honerva has been well into her plan for a while now. Nothing that Honerva accomplishes in this episode marks a beginning of anything. We are in the middle of things, not at the beginning of anything. The title just does not work.

This is an absolute mess of an episode. Once the story got well into the events at Oriande, I finally remembered that this is when Honerva gets Sincline. But what’s so confusing is that Sincline acts as if it is still being controlled by Lotor. Sincline refuses to shoot Allura, as if it’s still piloted by Lotor. Merla (or some miscellaneous female Colony Altean; I couldn’t tell for sure if it was Merla) interprets Sincline as being Lotor. Sincline stabs the mecha piloted by the male Colony Altean, like its being piloted by Lotor. Honerva speaks as if Sincline is being piloted by Lotor. Everything in this episode suggests Lotor is alive inside the Sincline. But this show eventually shows Lotor’s melted corpse inside. So, he can’t be alive and acting in this episode. This is a fundamental inconsistency in the writing.

No wonder many members of the audience feel this season was re-edited super late in the production of the season. I think I still would need to have someone who worked on the show provide an explanation for why such a change would have happened in order to think it did happen. I think the easiest explanation is that the executive producers, the story editor, and the writers just completely lost control of their storytelling and they didn’t care to regain control. I think because the series was ending. and they stopped caring about working on this show, they just totally half-assed everything. They didn’t care if the story made sense. They were just filling out time and completing their contractual obligation.

If they did make this season and episodes like this one and think that they were being coherent in their storytelling, then they have severe preceptive and interpretive problems. This episode is a storytelling disaster.

Staff meeting: We know now Honerva has been to certain places. Pidge says, “The wormhole signatures we discovered on Olkarion: they were a map to where the Robeasts were headed. They must’ve been waiting this entire time!” I don’t understand this conclusion Pidge is making. What is it that she thinks indicates Honerva’s forces actively waiting for something? And what is that supposed something Pidge thinks they were waiting for? Veronica reports that Honerva’s mechas are on planets, but not yet attacking them, instead just sitting there surrounded by a particle barrier. Now, with that report, a report given after Pidge’s comment, it would make sense to subsequently comment about them waiting for something. It’s like Pidge’s reaction is out of order with the knowledge that would prompt her reaction.

Meanwhile, on Oriande in front of the pyramid, Honerva gives a speech. I still think that Honerva’s voice sounds strange. She’s so emotionless, like she’s totally bored with what all is going on. “For eons our people have suffered, cast out from our home,” she says, but it has the same emotional energy as someone talking about needing to go to the store to buy toilet paper. “We have sacrificed much; you have sacrificed much,” she says. I guess the Colony Alteans don’t know that Honerva/Haggar was a participant in committing genocide, right? Who’s this “we” she’s talking about: She hasn’t sacrificed a damned thing. She’s been the one violently taking things from others. This series expects me to sympathize with her, but she’s a total hypocrite.

“Lotor gave more than any of us, and today, his ultimate wish will be fulfilled,” Honerva says. What wish is she referencing? Because his wish, expressed multiple times by him throughout the show, was to find a death-less source of quintessence so that he could try to change Galra culture to be less violent, so that he could show them a different way of achievement. I haven’t heard Honerva say anything that sounds like anything Lotor revealed about his motivations and goals. Honerva says, “The Galra will pay for what they have done to the Alteans. The end for anyone that dares oppose us is near.” Lotor had serious problems with the Galra, but it wasn’t until right before he died that he became totally anti-Galra, so that’s hardly his long-pursued goal. Even this season in 8x02 “Shadows” showed how much Lotor was invested in trying to show the Galra that there was a better way for the Galra to do things. It’s like Honerva, like the show’s executive producers and writers, is ignoring what Lotor himself explained again and again what his goals were.

The mechas on the various planets start acting, draining the planets of quintessence. Keith suggests splitting everyone up, one Lion per mecha to try to slow them down, which given their combined difficulty taking on one mecha at the end of season seven, I don’t know how Keith thinks that would work. Shiro suggests they use their whole force, Voltron and Atlas combined, and go from mecha to mecha. Allura stands up and says, “No, we must attack Oriande directly.” She goes on to describe what she thinks Honerva is doing. Honerva can create wormholes. She says that the Olkari cubes can “mimic and intensify energy at a distance.” Has that really been established about the cubes? Because I just remember them basically parrying any attack the Lions/Voltron tried until Pidge zapped the cubes with her plant cannon. (Why does she not try her plant cannon on the cubes when they get to the white hole?) Allura points out that the mechas effectively do the same work as the komar did. “Honerva is going to concentrate energy from across the universe to Oriande. She’s making a komar magnitudes larger than anything we’ve ever seen. Something that can drain the quintessence from an entire galaxy.” Everyone has big shocked looks on their faces, Coran quietly says, “That monster,” and I’m left just not feeling any emotion in this threat. It’s too generic, too cliché, too I’m-going-to-destroy-the-world-bwa-ha-ha! The threat just feels flat, and a huge part of why is because this story is not connected to the personal stories of any of the main characters. The only character who’s connected to this story is Honerva herself, and I do not care about her.

Keith says that Voltron will go to Oriande. Shiro says the Atlas will go too. Do any of them remember how they couldn’t actually get to Oriande and only Allura and Lotor were able to go? Is their plan to just get to the white hole and sit there, wait, and hope Honerva and her forces come out? Keith says to tell Matt that he and the Rebels have to handle evacuating planets. Why just the Rebels instead of the entire Voltron Coalition? I get why Shiro says that their immediate Voltron/Atlas strike force cannot wait for reinforcements from the Coalition before going to Oriande, but wouldn’t this still be an all-hands-on-deck moment? Shouldn’t the entire Coalition be responding, and thus helping with evacuations, not just the Rebels? I’ve never really felt this show depicted the Coalition acting as a large force well at all.

The Atlas wormholes the Rebels to wherever they’re going. Allura gives a voice over about how bad Honerva is. As speech like this should energize me, get me excited for the coming battle scenes, but the show has failed to set up what’s coming, so I’m not emotionally connected to what’s happening. The closest Allura’s speech got to having this conflict be relevant to the main characters is Allura feeling like Honerva’s manipulation of the Colony Alteans is an attack on Allura’s people. Aside from them being Alteans though, I don’t know how Allura is emotionally attached to them. Romelle and Luca are the only two she’s ever encountered, and as far as I can remember, Romelle is the only one Allura has ever talked to, and she’s never really talked to her about the Colony beyond listening to Romelle’s exposition about it in 6x04 “The Colony.” Allura has never gone to the Colony, Keith having told her it was too difficult to get to when she suggested going in 8x04 “Battle Scars.” We know the Colony is empty because Kolivan said a team he sent reported it so in 7x05 “The Ruins” (so it wasn’t too difficult to get to, despite Keith saying no to Allura’s wanting to go there). This show really hasn’t had Allura actively trying to find out what happened at the Colony and find the Colony Alteans, so, aside from them being the same species, I don’t know where Allura’s feeling connected to the Colony Alteans comes from.

The episode does a bit of reestablishing the idea of Honerva as a foil for Allura, juxtaposing them both using the two-handed pedestal device used to make wormholes, Allura on the Atlas, Honerva at the pyramid. The mechas start blasting their gathered quintessence from their planets through space to Honerva (so these quintessence blasts have to be moving really, really faster than light).

The Atlas arrives at the white hole. There’s some kind of interference that is causing some miscellaneous problem. Slav freaks out over socks. I liked Slav when he was introduced in 2x10 “Escape from Beta Traz,” but the timing/tonality of having him right now really feels distracting from what’s supposed to be a big, dramatic plotline.

The Atlas gets as close as it can to the white hole and can’t go any further. They see the Olkari cubes hanging out closer to the white hole. Veronica says she’s “picking something up. It’s coming from the white hole,” and Allura instantly thinks that it’s the guardian, the White Lion. So, (the clone of) Shiro never told Allura that he saw Honerva come to Oriande and kill the White Lion in 6x01 “Omega Shield” then?

The Atlas transforms to “clear a path” for Voltron. Voltron goes to launch from the Atlas, and Keith says, “I’m deferring command to Allura.” Rereading this commentary to edit and revise after finishing the episode, I don’t remember Allura giving any commands whatsoever, so I have no idea why Keith’s line even exists. Honerva’s mechas shoot the Atlas, which doesn’t seem to even feel being hit, and tries to counter by punching the mechas. Serious, punching?

Voltron forms and heads toward the white hole. Is it that they’re able to go in now because the White Lion isn’t there? They really could use a line where they put that fully together because otherwise they should think that they wouldn’t be able to get Voltron in the white hole since Voltron wasn’t allowed in when they tried back in 5x06 “White Lion.”

Beams of purple energy from the mechas destroying those planets come in, hit the Olkari cubes, and a purple ring forms from cube to cube around the white pillar (for lack of a better word) that comes off the white hole. The cubes and the ring bend the energy so that it travels down through the white pillar into the white hole. Voltron nearly gets hit by that energy.

“We got to move!” Keith says, and the show has Voltron once again use it’s formerly-special but now common solution: Voltron forms its large wings and blasts off.

The purple energy hits the pyramid, Honerva screams and her eyes turn yellow, the pyramid starts to glow. And suddenly, the White Lion is in a purple-red ball of energy. What? Seriously, what is going on? So, Honerva did not kill the White Lion in “Omega Shield?” She went to Oriande, she entered the white hole, she walked into the pyramid, she fought and seemed to destroy the stone statues, Shiro saw the White Lion jump toward him mouth first, so that had to have been from Honerva fighting the White Lion, then Honerva walked out of the pyramid surrounded by floating bits of energy, clearly successful at what she had done.

So, is it that the EPs, the story editor, and the writer for this episode didn’t remember the show already had Honerva fight the White Lion in “Omega Shield,” or is it that what Honerva did in “Omega Shield” was so badly written and depicted that they just didn’t properly show us what it was she was doing in that episode? We know from Allura’s time facing the White Lion that it only gave her knowledge of Altean alchemy because she was going to let it kill her. We know that Honerva is not the type of person who would do what Allura did in that moment. At the end of “Omega Shield” we are shown Honerva coming out of the pyramid successful. The bits of floating light around her in that moment was a visual signifier that she had acquired power, so she had to have killed the White Lion then in order to take that knowledge from him. So why is the White Lion now still alive? Are we really supposed to believe that Honerva has been merely imprisoning the White Lion in a bubble for over three years (and for 25 episodes)?

My guess, the show’s creative team totally forgot they already had Honerva face the White Lion. There’s been so many big events in the show, the character assassination of Lotor, the reveal of the clone, the mostly meaningless first half of season seven, the invasion and occupation of Earth, and the new season wasting time, and finally getting around to what Honerva is trying to do, that I can so easily imagine they forgot “Omega Shield.” They certainly never explained why the clone could actually see what Honerva was doing at Oriande. That’s one of my biggest frustrations with this show: that so many things happen, like the clone’s visions of Honerva at Oriande, like the whole reason Honerva had a ton of Shiro clones created in the first place, that things happen, they’re not explained, and then they’re forgotten by the show’s writers.

Actually, let me qualify this for the particular issue of the demise of the White Lion: the show’s writer, singular. “Omega Shield” was written by Mitch Iverson. This episode “Genesis” was written by Mitch Iverson. So, it’s not like one writer wrote one episode and another writer, writing this one, just didn’t pay attention to what someone else wrote for the show. Both episodes were written by the same person. So, he should have been able to remember what he had written previously.

“The Guardian: She’s draining its quintessence,” Allura says. Yeah, she already did that years ago though. Honerva screams some more. Allura cries out, “No!” as it happens. It’s supposed to be a moment that has significant emotion to it, it’s supposed to feel like a loss, but it doesn’t, and a lot of the reason why is because this has already happened 25 episodes ago. When Honerva walked out of the pyramid in “Omega Shield” she was surrounded by those little lights floating upward, which is the same imagery used here in this episode for Honerva’s mechas taking the quintessence from their respective planets. So, in “Omega Shield,” Honerva came out of her confrontation with the White Lion having gained quintessence, so if she hadn’t absorbed the White Lion’s quintessence then, what quintessence was it that she had floating around her when she came out of the pyramid?

Also, what is the logic behind what’s happening right now. Mechas have taken quintessence from four planets, beamed it to the cubes around Oriande, Honerva is using that quintessence to attack the White Lion. Allura says that Honerva is taking the White Lion’s quintessence. So, Honerva is using quintessence to take quintessence? Also, what happened to the conclusion that what Honerva was doing was creating a structure that she could use to drain an entire galaxy of its quintessence? What she’s doing has nothing to do with draining galaxies of quintessence.

Just seven minutes ago, Allura said this: “Honerva is going to concentrate energy from across the universe to Oriande. She’s making a komar magnitudes larger than anything we’ve ever seen. Something that can drain the quintessence from an entire galaxy.” But now, it’s not about draining galaxies but about draining the White Lion. I don’t even know how a professional writer could ever write this inconsistently. And where is the show’s quality control? Where were the story editor and the executive producers?

More mechas at the pyramid attack Voltron, Merla (I think) yelling, “Defend our goddess!” I really don’t like these Alteans. If this show was going to have villainous Alteans, why couldn’t have been the Altean Empire from the alternate reality in 3x04 “Hole in the Sky” because they actually seemed like they could be interesting. Merla and the Colony Alteans seem unintentionally funny rather than threatening because of how ludicrously over-the-top and undeveloped they are as characters.

The Atlas keeps trying to punch these much smaller, thus quicker, mechas, and I don’t know why. Did I miss something that said the Atlas loses use of its cannons when in mecha-mode? One mecha does the semi-holographic size increase projection of itself that we saw these mechas able to do in 7x13 “Lions’ Pride Part 2” and stabs the Atlas in the back.

Shiro orders, “Scramble the MFEs. We need their precise striking ability.” These people have access to science fiction weaponry, so that means their weapons should be better than what weapons we have in the real world today. That means, that the Atlas’s own targeting systems should be more than enough for precision attacks. Just because the MFEs are on fighter craft that are smaller and more maneuverable than the Atlas has nothing to do with a weapons system’s precision. The targeting system of the weapons system alone would be responsible for the weapon’s precision. The Atlas has not been shown using literally any weapons in this fight. All the Atlas has done is swing its fists and hit nothing. This is just an absolutely contrived way to get the MFEs into the story and to have Shiro and/or the Atlas look incompetent. This is really just to have the episode spinning its wheels, to look like the story is progressing while it’s actually not advancing whatsoever.

Also, in the hangar, why are there people floating as if there’s no gravity yet the MFE fighter craft are sitting on the floor like there is gravity?

Shiro tells the MFEs to attack the opening in the mechas’ chest, but these mechas haven’t drained any quintessence to be able to power their chest hole cannon, what makes Shiro think they’re going to do so that he can order the MFEs to target that spot? Shiro says, “Give them heavy covering fire so they can get in close.” But the Atlas then fires no weapons. The MFEs fly a significant distance to one of the mechas who’s just wildly firing its blaster all over the place at no targets whatsoever. Seriously, it’s shooting at chunks of rock in a completely different direction from where the Atlas is. So, if Shiro’s right in this statement (though not in the current animation) that the Atlas has weapons it can fire right now, why hasn’t it been firing any weapons?

Cut to Zethrid, Ezor, and the Olkari sitting in the brig. Did anyone really want to see them again? I didn’t even want to see them again last episode, and now we get to have even more with these side characters. The Olkari says, “I think we’re in the middle of a battle.” I think the writer thought this line made the Olkari sound fun and clever, when it makes him seem slow since the battle has been going on for a long time already, now is not when he’d be noticing it. Zethrid says, “We need to get out of here!” Why? Ezor says, “No,” and sounds really weird doing it.

So, they break out of prison. Veronica reports, “Zethrid and the Olkari have escaped their cells. It looks like they’re on their way to the bridge.” How do they know where the bridge is and how to get to it? This is the first time they’ve been on the Atlas, and I’m pretty sure that it’s not standard procedure to give prisoners a tour of key, secure locations like the bridge of the ship.

“We don’t have time for this!” Shiro shouts. Shiro’s comment sums up a lot of my opinion about scenes and episodes this season.

Apparently, there are no security personnel outside the bridge. Everyone pulls a gun and points it at the door after Shiro does so and says to “prepare for a breech.” Shiro holds his gun in his left hand. Last episode, Shiro held his gun in his right, prosthetic hand. Are you telling me that Shiro is equally skilled with a gun in both hands? More likely is that the animators just never got on the same page about how Shiro, with his overly large new hand, would use a gun. Also, because of the ludicrous design of his new prosthetic, in the shot of him pointing his gun at the door, it looks like he doesn’t have a right arm.

Zethrid opens the door and says, “We’re here to help.” If she knew the Atlas’s layout well enough to get from the brig to the bridge and knew its systems well enough to break out of the cell and into the bridge, then she could have used the Atlas’s internal communication system to contact the bridge and offer this help long before she got here. This is absolutely contrived writing in order to fake the audience into thinking Zethrid’s here to attack. But surprise! everyone – you are surprised by this plot twist, aren’t you? – she’s not here to be a villain now.

So, Zethrid came all the way here because she thinks her Olkari technology pirate can help with the Atlas. I know the show last episode had Pidge refer to this Olkari as “a genius,” but seriously? Zethrid this whole time was just totally assuming the Olkari could help.

This is such a freaking waste of time.

Shiro, who realistically would not have agreed to this, lets the Olkari mess with the Atlas’s systems. The Olkari says, “Excellent job fusing Earth technology with Altean magic.” How does this Olkari know anything about either Earth technology or Altean magic. He has never been to Earth nor has he been in position to study Altean magic. There is absolutely zero reason for his character to have said that line. He touches Shiro’s console and the greenish white circuit board lines throughout the ship start glowing. How? I know that the Olkari did the hand-touch-glow thing with their own technology, but that was their technology. This is technology that this guy has never seen before. Is the show trying to say that this Olkari is capable of producing Altean magic himself?

The MFEs are flying around being shot at. I thought they were supposed to be in play because they were capable of more precise weapons fire than the Atlas, but they’re not using any weapons whatsoever. If the MFEs don’t have access to the target they were sent to shoot, and they’re not shooting anything else, then why are they even in combat right now? What narrative purpose are they serving other than wasting screen-time? Maybe sacrifice this meaningless part of the episode to explain the clone’s visions in “Omega Shield” instead? Do something that actually has a purpose.

Rizavi gets hit. It’s supposed to be a big, dramatic moment: One of Honerva’s mechas comes swooping in at Rizavi, the animation goes into slow-motion, the music gets dramatic, her fighter is on fire, we’re supposed to think that she’s going to die. No one in the audience is attached to her character, so of course the show’s not going to kill her. This show pretty much only kills named characters that people actually like. The Atlas swings its fist and doesn’t hit the mecha. Why does the Atlas keep trying to punch the mechas? It hasn’t yet worked even once. Shiro had ordered the Atlas to fire weapons in support of the MFEs against the mechas earlier, and no weapons fire has happened.

I often have found myself wondering while watching this show and writing these commentaries if the writing team and the animation team communicated whatsoever. Did the writers just leave the action up to the animators to figure out, like did they just write in their scripts something like, [Put some ship fighting stuff here,] and that’s it? Did the animators not bother to read the scripts before storyboarding it all out? Too many episodes have left me feeling that there were two very separated teams working on this show.

Out of nowhere, somehow, there are now eleven Atlases. This is whatever the Olkari did. This show is literally just pulling things out of nowhere without any care about this not making any sense. They don’t care how absolutely absurd this is. Shiro says for Kinkade to get Rizavi back to the Atlas safely – uh, to which Atlas? How does Kinkade know which is the real Atlas? Are these new Atlases just an illusion? Or are they physical? Can they fight? Or are they just there to distract? Does Shiro even know what they can do? He certainly hasn’t reported this information to the MFEs, and knowing what your side is capable of during a conflict is hugely important for the unit to function, so I don’t see how this helps.

Shiro tells James and Leifsdottir to “use this opportunity to hone in on the Robeast’s crystal.” I thought they were supposed to be shooting the big hole in the mecha’s chest when they fire their big chest hole cannon. That’s what Shiro told them to do earlier. Now, they’re supposed to be going for some crystal in the mechas? Has the show even demonstrated that the mechas have a crystal in them? I know that the Garrison recovered parts of the mecha that attacked Earth, but I don’t remember there being any crystal shown to be part of the system. This show has frequently had crystals be a power source for technology, but the Garrison (and thus Shiro) learned that these mechas are powered by a living Altean pilot. So what crystal is Shiro talking about here?

Now, after having not used it in this battle before, one of Honerva’s mechas uses its chest hole cannon. But, as has been established previously in this series, it’s supposed to only be able to use this cannon after it has absorbed some quintessence from somewhere. This mecha firing right now has not absorbed any quintessence, so this cannon should not be functioning. It blasts two Atlases, so I guess they are just illusions. How the Atlas can project these illusions is just Olkari magic, I guess. Because who cares about actually having technology behave like technology ever on this show, everything is magic. Now, the mechas are using their chest hole cannon as just a regular, quick firing cannon instead of the big blaster it’s been in the past.

Also, the whole point of the MFEs being brought into this is that they were supposed to be able to be more precise than the Atlas. Of course, again, the Atlas has yet to shoot a single weapon in this fight. But given that the show has been trying to set up this idea that the Atlas is just too slow, and that’s why the MFEs, being smaller and more maneuverable than the Atlas, would be able to be more precise, the show doesn’t allow the MFEs themselves to know when to fire. Their weapons systems, which would be able to target way, way, way more precisely than a human eye could target, are not allowed to know when to fire. No, knowing when to fire is given to Shiro, who’s much further away from the mechas than the MFEs are. Everything having to do with Atlas weapons targeting and firing has been given to Iverson previously in this series. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that Shiro should be giving the MFEs a countdown to fire.

Also, why have they been sitting around waiting to fire until the chest hole closes? Why didn’t they fire before then? Wasn’t the point that they had to wait until the hole was open to be able to access the true target within? They make their shots and the mecha explodes. It does not feel like a success whatsoever because all of this feels so contrived. Everyone on the Atlas starts cheering, but why? They’re not done. There’s still another mecha, the fight’s not over.

Back to Oriande. Voltron and some mechas are fighting. They seem to draw some quintessence out of Voltron.

Honerva has several large geometric circles, one on the ground, and a couple in the air above it. She’s still at her wormhole-like interface that’s part of the pyramid. There’s quintessence wind blowing all around. Honerva’s appearance shifts quickly between Honerva’s and Haggar’s, including their clothes changing back and forth. Never during her shapeshifting before has clothing ever changed. Maybe this is supposed to be quintessence shapeshifting and not Altean species shapeshifting? Is it supposed to be alternate reality versions of Honerva, and they’re all, like this Honerva, at the same time tearing through realities? The three geometric circles collapse down onto the ground, and there’s an explosion.

The mechas conveniently stop attacking Voltron so that the Paladins can look at what Honerva’s done. Lance looks down at her and suddenly Lance sees a field of purple grass and several people in it. They look Altean.

Pidge says, “According to my readings, we’re seeing into other realities.” That is some seriously sensitive, amazing sensors on the Lions that Pidge can so instantaneously determine that they’re seeing other realities. It’s so contrived. Pidge continues, “There must be some kind of rip in the fabric of time. The essence of realities is leaking out. Honerva is tearing apart timelines. She could cause irreparable damage to reality itself!” This is a whole huge pile of conclusions that the show is having Pidge jump to. The specifics of what Pidge says makes nearly no sense whatsoever. I know that during the Voltron-Lotor fight, that they kept calling it a “quintessence field” and not a rift between realities, but the process of getting into the quintessence field was explicitly through his having an Altean alchemically infused ship built out of a trans-reality comet. The first time we ever saw the trans-reality comet, it was tearing a hole from this reality through the rift between realities and into a new reality. The Paladins going through the rift in 3x04 “Hole in the Sky” never had any time-based effects on anyone. Time relativity was an effect applied to going into the rift only at the beginning of season seven.

Maybe! that’s why the post-Lotor time jump has a huge plot hole in it. Maybe the decision to have there be a time relativity issue was only written into the story at the beginning of season seven and wasn’t part of the story at the end of season six. There being no time skip written into the battle with Lotor during season six’s finale would explain why Coran, Krolia, Romelle, and the Shiro-clone being outside of the rift where they should not have been affected by the time passing that we were told happened to because the Paladins were inside the rift. Time to write season seven came along, and they only then decided to do the three years passing while the Paladins were inside the rift, and they just hoped no one would remember that Coran, Krolia, Romelle, and the Shiro-clone were outside the rift and wouldn’t have been affected. If the decision for the time skip happened after they had already produced season six, then they wouldn’t have been able to have written the specifics of the events of the end of season six to allow for Coran and crew to be affected too.

So now, somehow, Honerva is shredding timelines because she’s looking into other realities. But again, the Paladins have literally gone to another reality and came back and never had anything happen to any timelines. That’s because a timeline is not the same thing as an alternate reality. Any particular timeline would only exist within its respective reality.

I don’t know why I’m trying to make sense of absolutely senseless writing like this.

The Blue Lion alerts Allura to its bayard slot, and Allura somehow knows that Blue not only wants her to use her bayard, but that Blue wants Hunk to use his bayard too. Has there ever been an instance where a Lion communicated with their Paladin about what another Lion wanted before? This time, Allura and Hunk combine to make a bunch of missiles on the sides of Voltron’s legs, which look like they destroy the mechas that Voltron was fighting.

Voltron tries to get near Honerva but is repelled. Honerva screams. I’m really not impressed by Honerva right now. Pidge’s reality-could-end proclamation is so over-the-top that it doesn’t feel threatening.

Outside the white hole, there are still several Atlases doing nothing while the mecha shoots miscellaneously at who knows what. The white pillar coming up out of the white hole starts blasting beams of light out of it, causing the illusory Atlases to disappear. Well, those illusions did literally nothing whatsoever. The Atlas is knocked into its ship form in a glowing blast of light. Since its transforming into mecha form is shown to have significant internal structural changes that are part of the process, I hope the crew is okay as it super quickly and spontaneously reverts to ship mode. The MFEs seem to be drifting without power, as is Honerva’s mecha.

There is no gravity on the Atlas. The show ignores how near-zero gravity works and has Sam, while floating in the middle of the room, change his direction and float in the other direction without having to grab hold of anything and push to make that change. This is not how physics works. Sam sits down in a chair, which you can’t do without gravity.

Slav says they were hit by “time spillage” which is “a rip in the fabric of this reality.” That makes literally no sense whatsoever. He says something something quintessence something power crystal. I don’t know what he’s saying. The writers don’t know what he’s saying, and they wrote it. The executive producers don’t care what he’s saying. When it’s this clear that the show itself doesn’t really care what’s happening, I can’t blame the audience for not caring. And guess what, I don’t care. Slav continues to rant about socks. Slav’s eccentricities while in a tense moment have totally worked before, but it does not work in this episode. It’s just distracting.

Cut to the mecha on one of the planets off in the universe collapsing. Matt and the Rebels have somehow evacuated an entire planet. I’ve complained about this show making planetary population look like a single village or single city before. I guess that’s still what they’re going with. A population of a planet able to be evacuated by a handful of ships in a couple of hours at most. That doesn’t feel even slightly realistic. I don’t even know why the show bothers to go back to Matt and the planet.

Back at Oriande, Honerva finally collapses from her screaming. There’s a big ball of light and suddenly the Sincline is there in front of her. So, her “tearing apart timelines” – mistaking timelines and alternate realities as being the same thing when they’re not – was her looking for her proclaimed perfect alternate reality, right? And she simultaneously pulled Sincline out of the rift between realities. So, what she did here was two goals. Neither of those goals was draining an entire galaxy of quintessence like the beginning of the episode said it was. “This was Honerva’s plan all along,” Keith says. Thanks for that absolutely pointless dialog. We would have no idea that what Honerva has done had been her plan unless someone, now after the plan has been accomplished, said it.

It very much feels like Honerva is again violating her son by doing this. He hated her so much because she abused him so much for so long. I very much imagine Lotor would totally rather remain in the rift rotting than to be brought back and used by Honerva now. Like I said, this totally feels like a disgusting violation.

Keith orders Voltron to attack Sincline. I honestly got enough of Voltron v. Sincline already in this show. I don’t know why they thought bringing Sincline back would be interesting. Sincline is so fundamentally tied to Lotor, and this show did everything it could to destroy Lotor’s character all for an offensive plot twist. The EPs and writers just couldn’t let Lotor rest in peace.

Surprise, Voltron’s leg missiles did literally nothing. The Colony Alteans’ mechas are still functioning fine. Somehow these Colony Alteans know what Sincline looks like and that Lotor piloted the Sincline. They see Sincline and are instantly, “Lotor!” and “Lotor has returned!”

Merla pulls up a zoomed-in footage of Sincline beating up Voltron. She looks shocked. This is Merla, right? Or is it some miscellaneous, unidentified Colony Altean? I honestly cannot tell. Why is this surprising her? She’s been a zealot wanting to destroy Voltron for a while now, she shouldn’t be unnerved by seeing this.

Sincline knocks Voltron into separate Lions, which hit the ground, powerless.

Merla says, “Something’s not right.” What? Why is she suddenly having a totally change in her personality? She wanted to destroy Voltron. Now that Sincline is trying to destroy Voltron, suddenly she’s bothered by the idea? This makes no sense. This show is really really bad at managing and maintaining characters’ motivations and goals.

Allura can’t get the Blue Lion to do anything, she sees Honerva outside of her window, so she decides to leave Blue and attack Honerva. Sincline sees Allura outside of Blue, aims a wrist cannon at her, zooms in on her, clearly showing it’s Allura. Lance regains consciousness and Red is working again, and he moves to counter Sincline. The Colony Alteans see Red, but only the male Altean goes after Red. Merla doesn’t. The Altean intercepts Red. Sincline stops aiming at Allura. Sincline turns to look at the male Altean in the mecha, the male Altean mecha pilot says, “Lotor?” and then Sincline stabs the mecha through with Sincline’s tail.

So then, this is actually supposed to be Lotor piloting the Sincline? Lotor is never shown in this season other than as a flashback, as a hallucination, and as a melted corpse. This very clearly seems like the episode means for Lotor to be alive right now. Sincline actively resisted firing on Allura. Sincline actively attacked the Altean in the mecha. This cannot be Honerva controlling Sincline remotely. So then, what’s up with Lotor?

It makes so much sense that so many viewers think this season was mostly made and then hastily re-edited super late into the production. This is a fundamentally huge inconsistency that is never explained.

So, Sincline destroyed the mecha when the mecha protected Sincline from the Red Lion, but then Sincline creates a sword with which to attack the Red Lion. Why is this happening? What character motivation is going on with Sincline’s actions? Who is the character actually doing the acting? How could these extremely fundamental elements to storytelling be something the executive producers, story editor, and episode writer all collectively omitted in this scene and in this episode?

Honerva weakly reaches up toward Sincline and says, “Still,” so Sincline was acting on its own, not under her control. Until now. By showing her now exerting some control over Sincline, the show is very specifically saying she was not in control of it before now.

Allura comes jumping in, turning her bayard into a spear to try to stab Honerva. Honerva either goes to teleport or just turn everything black or something. Then Allura stands amid blackness everywhere. Honerva tells Allura, “This is just the beginning. Join me and our people. Together, we will go back to Altea.” Allura fully and clearly states that Honerva is to blame for Altea’s destruction. Honerva completely ignores what Allura says. Honerva says, “Think of your father. I knew Alfor well.” We’ve seen enough of Honerva’s interaction with Alfor to know she was not interested in knowing him personally. They were not friends. “This is what he would have wanted.” I guess Honerva’s just supposed to be trying (really poorly trying) to manipulate Allura?

I do really, really like Allura’s line: “You cannot keep me here forever, and the moment you release your hold, I will end you.” Yeah, that line is clearly the best thing in this episode.

Honerva then says, “Then you will end your friends as well. I am the only thing keeping my son at bay.” So, this episode was written for Lotor to be alive in it? Then what happened that he’s alive now but isn’t for the rest of the season?

Honerva and Allura return to Allura diving at Honerva with her spear. Allura gets tears in her eyes and decides to not kill Honerva. Honerva makes a hand gesture and Sincline leaves the Red Lion alone. She then makes Sincline kneel to her.

I had thought that it felt like a violation for Honerva to pull Sincline out of the rift solely because of how much Lotor hated her. He would want absolutely nothing to do with her. But now that she’s using her magic to control Sincline, to, per her own words, control Lotor, it is an even bigger violation. She continues to abuse him. And the show has the audacity to say that Lotor was fully unredeemable and evil, but that Honerva is not at fault for her gross actions and should be forgiven. She is violating her son. That is not something you forgive someone for doing. Her actions are thoroughly disgusting and immoral. And it’s disgusting that the executive producers and writers tell us by the end of series that Honerva is absolved of responsibility for her actions.

The Atlas powers back up. Shiro orders the MFEs onboard.

On Oriande, the pyramid structure begins to break free of the rock and ascend into the sky. Allura gets back into Blue and starts trying to talk the Paladins into consciousness. The Lions fly away from Oriande. Pidge says, “The white hole is closing. If we don’t get out, we’ll be trapped here forever.” Now, a white hole is only a possibility in theoretical astrophysics, but the term white hole has a very distinct definition, whether they truly exist somewhere in this universe or not. Pidge’s description of it closing and the being trapped in it is not accurate. A white hole, like a black hole, is not a hole. It cannot close. By definition, a white hole explicitly allows for light and matter to escape it.

Veronica says, “The white hole’s energy is collapsing into a gravity surge. There’s no way we’ll hit escape velocity.” This doesn’t make any sense. A “gravity surge” sounds like an oxymoron. Gravity pulls inward, a surge connotes an outward push. The need for “escape velocity” suggest they’ll be pulled inescapably inward, but a white hole, by definition allows light and matter to escape. Coran says they need a wormhole to escape.

The Lions emerge from the white hole. Shiro orders Coran to make a wormhole. I guess the Atlas, like the Castle of Lions eventually did when the show violated its own premises and moved Allura in to the Blue Lion, can create wormholes without Allura there to provide the power to do so. The Atlas and the Lions enter the wormhole. And then exit into a quiet, peaceful area of space.

Allura says, “We failed. And every reality will pay the price.” That’s a big dramatic statement, but she has no real reason to think that right now. Yes, Honerva seems to be at least having an affect on alternate realities while doing what she was doing at Oriande, but she would seem to have accomplished her goal. That goal would seem to be getting Sincline. There is no reason for Allura to think that Honerva is going to mess with alternate realities yet.

Yeah, this episode is an absolute mess, and I’m exhausted.

#voltron legendary defender #voltron #vld #voltron criticism #vld criticism #voltron critical #vld critical #vld season 8 #vld 8x06 #commentary

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voltrontranscript · 4 years ago

Text

VLD S8E9: Knights of Light, Part 1

Season 8 Episode 9: Knights of Light, Part 1

Transcript by @dragonofyang

Summary: After taking the dark entity within herself, Allura discovers she’s now mentally linked to Honerva. Using this connection to reach into Honerva’s mind with the help of the other paladins, they discover that there are more ghosts haunting her than they realized.

[Google Doc]

Honerva’s Voice: Allura. Allura. Allura. Allura… Allura!

Lance: Allura, are you okay?

Allura: What’s going on? Where am I?

Coran: You’re in the medical bay.

Lance: When we got back from Clear Day, we found you collapsed on the ground.

Coran: You’ve been asleep for two quintants. The entity, it’s missing. Did you…?

Allura: I did what needed to be done.

Coran: No.

Lance: What needed to be done? What are you talking about?

Allura: This entity, it is connected to Honerva in some way. I believe we can use it.

Lance: Use it? I…

Coran: I swore to your father that I would look after you, but I fear I may have let him down. This is the path of darkness.

Allura: It is the path toward defeating Honerva.

[Scene change to Shiro approaching a door, where he is greeted by the paladins.]

Shiro: You wanted to see me?

Pidge: We’ve been working on something, and we thought we’d run it by you.

Keith: We think we might have a way to find Honerva.

Allura: The entity has bonded me to Honerva. The link is there whether we utilize it or not. I believe that if the Paladins connect using the shared consciousness of Voltron, we may be able to travel through the void and into Honerva’s mind.

Pidge: That could, in theory, give us access to her physical location, as well as key information on how to defeat her.

Hunk: Which, after what happened the last time we faced her, could be super useful.

Keith: Honerva is capable of creating galactic Komars, wormholes, robeasts, and now Lotor and his mech are out there somewhere. She is the single greatest threat the universe has ever faced, and we don’t have any other leads. It might take lifetimes for another opportunity like this to come around. We think this is worth the risk.

Shiro: I spent a lot of time in the infinite void. It took all my strength not to lose my sanity. And if you face Honerva in the void, she will win. But, if you can find a clue that leads to defeating Honerva and Lotor, it could give us the upper hand in this fight.

Lance: I don’t like the idea of using Allura like this. We’re messing with powers we don’t fully understand that have ruined countless lives. It’s… it’s dangerous.

Allura: Lance, we’re the Paladins of Voltron. There’s no one more capable of taking this on. It has to be us.

Lance: Let’s do it.

Allura: Besides, the team will have our sharpshooter there to keep us safe.

Lance: I knew that nickname was gonna catch on one of these days.

Coran: It’s been a long time since it was only the seven of us in a room together.

Keith: Let’s make sure it’s not the last.

[Cut to Keith in Black Lion as Voltron powers up.]

Lance: Allura, are you okay?

Allura: I’m fine.

[Scene change to Veronica on the bridge.]

Veronica: It doesn’t seem fair that he won with a robot arm.

Iverson: Ah, almost everyone had a robot arm. The last guy had two robot arms.

Shiro: The lions are launching. Put the Atlas on high alert. Iverson, power up the Atlas’ weapons. Veronica, make sure the shield system is go.

Veronica: High alert? What’s going on?

Shiro: We’re just being careful. The Atlas needs to be prepared for any eventuality.

[Cut to Allura in Blue Lion.]

Allura: It is time to begin.

[Scene change to the astral plane.]

Hunk: Now what?

Keith: Allura, do you feel anything?

Allura: We must travel through that light!

Hunk: It looks so far away. How do you know?

Allura: The entity draws me toward it!

Lance: What is this place? It’s like… it’s like I can hear what the universe is thinking.

Pidge: Remember how the Olkari told me that everything is made of the same energy? I think it has something to do with that.

Hunk: So, thoughts are linked across some kind of, what, cosmic connection?

Keith: Yeah, but I think we are the thoughts inside a network of other people’s thoughts.

Lance: Oh, this is making my head hurt.

Hunk: Yeah, I’m actually with Lance on this one.

Allura: If we are to--[screams]

[Cut to the Atlas bridge.]

Coran: I’m detecting fluctuations in Voltron’s energy signature. Should we do anything?

Shiro: Hold.

[Cut back to the Paladins in the astral plane.]

Lance: What was that?

Hunk: It felt like cold water running down my spine.

Allura: That was Honerva.

Lance: What?

Allura: The entity inside of me is connected to her.

Hunk: Wait, then why did we feel it?

Keith: It must be because we’re all connected through Voltron.

Allura: Yes. The psychic link between us is now shared with Honerva. The closer we are to her, the stronger that link.

Lance: This is too dangerous. Honerva is gonna use the connection to find us, to find you.

Allura: No, this is how we are going to find her, but first, I must learn how to utilize this energy to do so.

Keith: This isn’t just on you now, Princess. We’re all in this together. Maybe if we concentrate, we’ll be able to feel her energy. Then we can track it back to its source. Let’s all focus.

Hunk: This is awesome!

[Scene change to a wide starry scape with two planets visible as Voltron flies by.]

Hunk: I can feel something, like an energy inside me.

Allura: It’s the entity.

Lance: This feeling, it’s like…

Keith: Like a dark realization washing over.

Pidge: It’s like we’re being pulled by a tether connected to our souls.

Allura: We’re getting closer. This way.

Hunk: Is this Honerva’s mind?

Allura: It’s on the other side of this wall.

Pidge: What is this?

Allura: It feels like… like these are the souls that Honerva has defeated and corrupted. It’s terrible.

Hunk: Of course we’re gonna have to get on the other side of the--what?

Pidge: Allura!

Keith: Come on! No! Come on!

[Scene change to Pidge inside Honerva’s mind, a green and black plain lit by stars.]

Pidge: Guys? Where am I? Guys, do you copy? Guys?! Team, can you hear me?

[Cut to Hunk inside Honerva’s mind, a yellow and black plain lit by stars.]

Hunk: Hello! Anyone?

[Cut to Lance in a red and black plain lit by stars.]

Lance: Team! Something severed our connection!

[Cut to Allura in a blue and black plain lit by stars.]

Allura: Paladins, respond! Why can you not hear me?

[Cut to Keith, on the black plain that shields Honerva’s mind.]

Keith: There has to be a way in. I can’t feel them.

[Cut to Pidge.]

Pidge: I can’t even feel my lion!

[Cut to Hunk, then Allura.]

Allura: Paladins! I will not let you hurt us any longer! This is some kind of horrible ruse and you will pay dearly for it. Time to end this!

[Flash back to the Castle of Lions armory.]

Alfor: Your suits of armor.

Trigel: They’re incredible.

Zarkon: We will be a force to be reckoned with in these armaments.

Gyrgan: They stretch, right?

Alfor: Yes, Gyrgan, they mold to fit their paladin.

Trigel: When will your wonders end, Alfor?

Alfor: Interesting you should mention that. I have one more piece of equipment for all of you.

Zarkon: What are they?

Alfor: I call them bayards. Now, each bayard is crafted with a small fragment of the comet’s ore.

Zarkon: With this much power, we will be unstoppable.

Alfor: They can create powerful weapons, but they can also act as a key bridging a paladin’s essence with their lion. Only so long as we fight together as a single unit. To defend the universe.

All: To defend the universe!

[Flash forward to return to Allura and Blaytz in the blue and black plain of Honerva’s mind.]

Allura: It’s really you.

[Cut to Pidge and Trigel in the green and black plain.]

Pidge: Your soul! Honerva must have--

[Cut to Hunk and Gyrgan in the yellow and black plain.]

Hunk: --trapped you here somehow! Please, I don’t want to fight you!

[Cut to Lance and Alfor in the red and black plain.]

Lance: Please! Remember who you are!

[Cut to Allura and Blaytz in the blue and black plain again.]

Allura: Blaytz, please.

[Flash back to the Castle of Lions on Altea.]

Alfor: Make no mistake, Zarkon is coming.

Trigel: Then we use the lions, fight him until our last breath.

Alfor: I am not certain we can win this fight. We cannot risk Voltron falling into his hands. We will utilize our lions to seal the Black Lion. Once we are done, we will send our lions as far away as possible. Coran, you and the Castle of Lions will take the Black Lion away.

Coran: You would have me leave your side at the very end?

Alfor: No. I would have you stand by my daughter’s. I am entrusting you with what is most precious to me in this entire universe, Coran.

Coran: It will be my greatest honor.

Gyrgan: Then it is decided. We go into battle together, one last time.

Alfor: To defend the universe.

All: To defend the universe.

[Flash forward to Trigel and Pidge in the green and black plain.]

Trigel: What… Where am I?

[Cut to Hunk and Gyrgan in the yellow and black plain.]

Hunk: You’re in the void just outside of Honerva’s mind. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true.

[Cut to Blaytz and Allura in the blue and black plain.]

Blaytz: Are the visions from the lions true?

[Cut to Alfor and Lance in the red and black plain.]

Alfor: Has it really been ten thousand years?

Lance: It has.

[Cut to Hunk and Gyrgan in the yellow and black plain.]

Gyrgan: It saddens me greatly to learn that Zarkon wreaked such destruction in our absence.

Hunk: But not completely. Voltron was reformed and the Paladins fly together again.

Gyrgan: I have always believed that unity is where true power comes from, and true unity can only be born of love.

[Cut to Trigel and Pidge in the green and black plain.]

Trigel: I can’t tell you how much it warms my heart to know that someone so connected to the world around her is piloting the Green Lion. My race believes observation to be the most revered attribute. It is where intelligence is born. And for you, it is where it has thrived. The infinite abilities of your mind dwarf the smallness of your size. The Green Lion could not have found a more perfect Paladin.

[Cut to Blaytz and Allura in the blue and black plain.]

Blaytz: People often overlooked me because I was different, but the Blue Lion recognized something in me, something others couldn’t see. It saw the greatness within that even I did not. You, Allura, have greatness within you, as well. You’re so much like your father, and yet so different. You’re a remarkable person. Thank you for saving us.

[Cut to Alfor and Lance in the red and black plain.]

Alfor: Through the lion’s bond, I could feel your love for my daughter.

Lance: I could feel yours, as well.

Alfor: As Paladins, we face many quests throughout the cosmos, but the most amazing journey is that of life. And the biggest question you face is who to go on that journey with. I’m glad my daughter chose you.

[Cut to Keith on the black plain at the boundary of Honerva’s mind.]

Keith: Please. You’re back. You guys are alright. Wait, are they the…

Pidge: Yep, the original paladins.

Alfor: Allura! It is fitting that I would find what is brightest to me in the darkest place.

Allura: All that I have done, I have done to make you proud.

Hunk: Their souls were trapped by Honerva’s dark magic. When we came near Honvera’s consciousness, our connection attracted them to us. Crazy, right?

Pidge: But we used that connection to free them. The lions created a bridge, sharing old memories with new.

Alfor: What’s going on?

Allura: Honerva’s connection grows. We are very close to her now.

Alfor: You hold a dark entity within you. Don’t you know how dangerous that is? That’s what led to Honerva and Zarkon’s end.

Allura: I know the danger, but now I have the power to stop Honerva. You had to make a difficult choice in war by sending the lions away. I also had to make a difficult choice. I’m not going to be afraid to use the power I have. We need to continue.

Lance: But how do we get past the wall?

Allura: It’s… it’s like I can feel her thoughts. The way through is with the darkness.

Alfor: Honerva went mad, obsessed with darkness and power.

Allura: And now, we must enter her mind.

End.

#vld #voltron #transcript #allura #lance #pidge #hunk #keith #shiro #coran #honerva #zarkon #alfor #blaytz #trigel #gyrgan #iverson #veronica

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medu-nefer · 5 years ago

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Dragged Away - Ilun & Vrek

Another wave of black flashes filled the sky, seeking any living beings to feed off their quintessence. The effect of the Komar, just on much smaller scale.

Not small enough, though. They were still being struck, dying in their dozens as they fought for themselves, for their brothers and sisters, and the brotherhood itself.

But despite their extraordinary skill and drive, the Blade of Marmora were falling too fast to the Druids' dirty ways. They were taking those masked bastards out but at a horrible cost.

Bodies of both Druids and Blades littered the ground, with the majority belonging to the latter.

(read it on ao3)

Vrek flinched when a net of black flashes cut through the air at his head's level, merely a pace from him. His head snapped towards the source just to see about a dozen Blades throwing themselves at the Druid at the same moment. He watched as at least five were struck, three dead before they hit the ground. But enough luxite blades tore into his body and the Druid imploded.

A hand landed on his shoulder and immediately squeezed, letting him know it was Ilun. He glanced over his shoulder at her, noting the numerous scratches and dents in her armour.

'We need to get to Kolivan,' Ilun said, pointing in the direction where their leader has been last seen about half a varga ago.

Vrek nodded, a grim expression settling on his face. It was hard enough out there, a good distance away from the focal point of the assault.

They began their trek through the rubble, their aching limbs feeling too heavy and heavier still every time they aided their siblings in their battles.

Vrek wasn't sure if they had any real chances of winning. But, whether he liked it or not, it was their best chance. And dying at his trusted companions' side was preferable to being picked out one by one, no doubts about that.

But his heart was still heavy with his grief and desperation. They had worked so hard to get to where they did. They had kept their existence a secret for so many deca-phoebs, even under Zarkon's own nose. And now they could very well all die here, on this planet.

Not for the first time, he wondered what happened to Voltron, and a shadow of a doubt sneaked into his heart. If Voltron was gone, the Coalition was in shambles, and now they were wiped out, there would be no one left to fight.

Sendak, all the little warlords, and the Druids would bring chaos and destruction to the universe.

Perhaps it was better they were so likely to die here. Seeing all they had worked for so hard being reduced to ashes had been painful enough as it was. Losing even more would be a devastating blow.

Still, if they did survive this hell, they could rebuild. They had created the underground once and would do so again.

It would really make things easier if Kolivan was alive, though. They needed to find him and ensure his safety. Well, survival. Vrek was perfectly fine with survival.

Finally, one they climbed a lone standing wall of a fallen building, they managed to locate the Marmoran leader. He was cut and tired, but very much leading the defence still.

In Vrek's opinion, Kolivan would have made a great Paladin. Not that he'd be pleased with their leader leaving to pilot one of the Lions. No. Definitely not pleased at all.

'I'm worried about the left flank.'

Vrek tilted his head to one side and looked in the proper direction at the sound of Ilun's voice. It did seem to weaken there. It still held but reinforcing seemed like a good idea.

Vrek motioned to Ilun to follow him and started to slip down the wall.

In the end, what they had seen didn't even matter. There was a shivering travelling through the wall, a loud cracking noise, and the structure exploded in a rain of debris, laced through with Druid magic, the twisted black fingers reaching for any who dared come close enough.

Still falling, Vrek felt how a big piece of the structure hit him square in the chest, denting his armour to the point where horrible pain exploded in his ribcage.

The next thing he knew, he was hitting the ground in a heap of limbs. Hard.

Then came the black.

The pain was extraordinary, he decided, when something tugged at his back, his legs dragging over a mass of bricks and chipped stones.

His head was spinning and his vision swam as nausea swept through him. He could taste the sour taste of blood on his tongue and his breathing was laboured.

Bumping into things below and behind him definitely didn't help.

He managed to twist his head a little and saw the underside of Ilun's chin. Her mask was disabled and the thin fur covering her face was matted with blood and dust. There was a big tear in the arm of her suit and she was limping.

And yet she still dragged him away from the site of the explosion.

He could barely move, his energy completely reduced to almost nothing. It seemed like a Druid had landed at least one actual hit.

He disabled his mask, catching Ilun's attention. He gave her a tiny smile that she tried to mirror but was interrupted by a coughing fit that had wreaked through Vrek's body and dragged a trickle of blood down the corner of his mouth.

It was terrifyingly quiet. Not silent, not quite yet, but the sounds were muffled and distant, as if a lot of the fighting had ceased. It was hard to say how much time had passed or whose numbers were greater.

They were getting away from the battlefield and a flicker of anger burned hot inside his chest, even if just for a tick.

Of course Ilun was getting them away, she had no choice. They were in no fit state to fight, obviously. His ribs were broken at best, and he could be haemorrhaging internally at worst. If he was, he was as good as dead. No medics, no medical equipment. If one suffered a critical injury, they were already dead. It was as simple as that.

He could only hope Ilun wasn't seriously wounded. She might just be the only Blade remaining.

With a heavy sigh, Vrek resigned himself to his fate, be it death or an unwinnable fight against all too powerful foes.

He wasn't sure which one he dreaded more.

#whumptober2019 #no.4 #ilun #vrek #blade of marmora #voltron #vld #wow i'm still doing this

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voltron-s7-8-rewrite · 5 years ago

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Defenders of All Universes, Part 2

This is part of my Voltron Season 7 & 8 re-write. If you are interested start HERE

From the ground where they crashed, Allura weakly opens her eyes. Confused as to where she is and what happened, she glances around before looking out of her viewing screen at the sky above. She watches in horror as the rift creature appears from the hole above Oriande, and everything comes rushing back to her. Realizing what's happening, she weakly calls to the Paladins, telling them they need to get up to stop the creature before it comes to full power.

There is no response from the others, and she attempts to reach her controls, but the slightest movement causes her pain. Crying out she tries to breath through it.

Lance's voice weakly comes over the comm asking if she's alright. She says she is hurt, and can't move, she will have to rely on Lance and the others to get Voltron up.

Hunk's voice then comes through and tells them that he can't move either. Pidge finally comes to and says she's pulling up Voltron's systems to get everyone's readings.

She goes silent, and Lance asks her what her readings say, when she doesn't answer, he desperately asks her again. Keith, voice barely audible and laced with pain, says they already know the answer, they can all feel it;

They are dying.

Allura lets out a devastated gasp, realizing what Keith said is true. She can feel the Quintessence of each Paladin growing weaker and weaker by the second. She squeezes her eyes shut as tears begin running down her face. Biting her lip she opens her eyes to the skies above, watching as the Dark Entity slowly makes its way out of the rift, swatting at Coalition ships and Komar Mechs alike. The Atlas and The Narti shoot at it, but none of their attacks even gives it pause.

Allura says that this can't be the end, Voltron was the only thing able to stop that creature once before; they can't leave the universe to this dark fate.

Lance tries to comfort her, saying that they have to trust in their family and friends, they are strong, and the Paladins have to believe that they will pull through.

Unable to do anything, the Paladins watch the fight above.

After a moment, Lance wistfully says that he's sure Veronica is formulating a perfect plan that will help them overcome the creature and win the day. Pidge lets out a small, pained chuckle, saying that it will be perfect with her parent's help of course, and Lance agrees wholeheartedly.

Keith goes along with their fantasy and says that Shiro and Kolivan will take that plan and use it to lead the Coalition to victory. Hunk says that afterwards everyone will come together and trow the biggest party the universe has ever seen. Allura finishes the fantasy by saying that after that there will be peace. Romelle will lead the Alteans, Kolivan and Krolia the Galra, and the universe will once more be free.

As they speak, the Paladins begin to lose their composure, realizing this is their end. However they are able to look up at where their loved ones are, hope for them in their hearts. They finally smile as they dream of their families going on to have long and happy lives after this war is over.

The Paladins become quite until Lance says that he's happy he gets to be with them in the end. He asks if that's selfish, and others say it isn't, they feel the same way. Once more they grow quiet, focusing on their bond, clinging to each other in a mental embrace.

As they solemnly watch the battle above, Keith notices that the rift is still open, and sees the glowing, golden quintessence within it. He raises his right hand and looks at it, then back to the Quintessence as a thought occurs to him.

Calling to Allura he asks her to look in the Rift. He explains that back when he fought Macadius at the Galra facility, his hand was seriously injured. A vat of the uncorrupted, golden quintessence splashed on him, and healed it. He asks Allura if the Quintessence in the Rift could heal and rejuvenate them in the same way.

Lance, Hunk, and Pidge think that he's mad for asking that. Lance saying that he thought it was the rift's Quintessence that made Zarkon and Honerva crazy.

Allura says that her father thought that the prolonged exposure is what changed them, but she saw Haggar's mind, it was her contact with the Rift Creature that corrupted them, not the Quintessence.

Considering Keith's question, Allura says she believes it could, but just because it healed him doesn't mean it's not dangerous. If they absorbed too much it could kill them.

Pidge points out that they are already dying, so long as this doesn't end with them becoming Quintessence seeking zombies like Zarkon and Haggar, they don't have anything to lose.

Hunk questions how they can even get it to them, it's up in the rift, and they can't fly up to it.

Allura says that being on Oriande, her abilities are heightened. She may be able to draw the Quintessence to them.

Keith, growing weaker by the minute, says this isn't a decision he alone will make. They all need to be onboard for this. Lance, Hunk, and Pidge each consider the severity of this, and agree. Keith tells Allura to do it.

Allura begins to glow and closes her eyes, she slowly draws the Quintessence from the rift and down into Voltron. However, the strain is too much for her wounded and weakened state, and she begins to lose her grip on it.

Keith feels her powers waning and tells the others to send Allura all the energy they have left. The four paladins close their eyes and each begin to glow. Their lions join in, and together they all send Allura the last of their Quintessence.

Allura shines bright, and opens her glowing golden eyes. Connecting with Blue, the Quintessence shoots out of the rift, and goes directly into Voltron. With a mighty shout, Allura attempts to control the amount absorbed. ______________________

As Quintessence pours out of the rift, the Dark Creature pauses it's attack on the Coalition and turns to see the blinding light that engulfs Voltron.

Those on the bridges of both The Atlas and Narti watch with hope and suddenly, a flaming blue sword cuts through the light, dissipating it. Standing whole and healed is Voltron in a new Hyperphase form.

Not allowing the Creature a chance to gain the upper hand, Hyperphase Voltron flies at it, brandishing its sword. The Creature retreats, and the crews of The Atlas and The Narti cheer Voltron on as it flies past both ships.

Voltron and the Creature trade attacks, with Voltron getting in hit after hit, while easily avoiding everything the Creature throws at them.

As the Creature tries to get close to attack, Voltron twists and grabs it, attempting to blast it with their chest beam, however as soon as they touch the creature, time seems to freeze for Allura as she feels the Creature's Quintessence and realizes what it truly is.

She comes back to herself before they unleash their blast, and shouts for them to stop the attack. Her sudden order startles and confuses the Paladins, giving the creature the chance to break away.

The others ask her what's wrong, and Allura reveals that the Rift Creature isn't what they thought it was. It's not some creature from another reality, it's the corrupted form of Oriande's Guardian; it's the White Lion.

When they came in contact with it she was able to feel it's quintessence and saw that when Honerva tried to destroy the White Lion by using the dark entity within her, it instead corrupted the Guardian. The resulting explosion from Honerva's attack momentarily opened a small rift that the corrupted Guardian fell though. Due to the unstable temporal qualities of the rift, the corrupted Guardian ended up in the past where it appeared on Diabazaal and ended up corrupting Honerva, Zarkon, and eventually Lotor. Ever since that day, it's remained in the rift, waiting for the chance to be released again.

The others are stunned by this reveal, and Keith asks her what they can do. Allura says she believes that she can purify the Guardian using her Alchemy. Keith says they will follow her lead, and Allura tells them to catch it.

Voltron chases the entity, but it dances around them, still trying to attack and destroy. Keith calls for The Atlas for back up, and Shiro, along with the MFEs and The Narti try to distract it.

Griffin calls to Axca, and working together, the MFE's, Axca, Ezor, and Zethrid are able to position themselves where they constantly block the Creature's paths. Distracted by the multiple ships closing in on it, the Creature doesn't see as Voltron flies in and grabs it.

The creature desperately tries to get away, but Lance and Pidge clings to it tightly. Keith feels their struggle to hold it, and tells Allura to do what she needs to do fast.

Allura begins to glow, and sends her quintessence through Voltron and into the creature. The Darkness within it resists her and pushes back. The Paladins feel the pain that causes Allura, and the momentary slip almost allows it to get out of their grip. Lance and Pidge call out to each other and double down, reclaiming the creature before it breaks free.

Allura continues to send her Quintessence to it, crying out from the strain. Keith feels her desperation to get through to it, and tells the others to use their bond to help her. They once again share their Quintessence with her, and through their combined energy Allura is able to bush through the corruption, and eradicate the dark energy.

In a flash of blinding light, the White Lion is returned to its pure state.

As everyone looks upon the restored, glowing Lion, in awe, no one notices the damaged and burning Sincline Mech beginning to power back online.

______________________

Seeing the White Lion reform Voltron and the coalition cheers. From The Atlas Shiro calls to the Paladins, asking them how they are, and the Paladins all report that they are great.

Shiro smiles and turns his attention to the opened rift. With most of the Komar Mechs non-functional, and the other threats dealt with, closing the Rift is the biggest concern.

Shiro asks the Paladins if they know what to do, Allura looks out to where the White Lion is and finds it staring at her, it bows its head before vanishing. She realizes what must happen and and begins to explain that destroying Diabazaal was enough to close the first one. Destroying Oriande will close this one.

The others are horrified, and Shiro asks her if there is nothing else they can do; the Alteans have lost so much, to lose this place that is so deeply rooted in their past can't be the only option.

Allura smiles sadly and says that it will be a grave loss, but there is no other way. Besides, the Alteans know that it's not the planet that makes a home. They will be fine.

Shiro nods in understanding and goes to give the order to evacuate, but Veronica interrupts as warning alarms suddenly blare. She says that the Sincline is up, and flying straight for the rift.

Seeing this, Allura shouts for everyone to stop Honerva, as she could destroy all of reality if her ship gets to the rift.

The Atlas, Narti, and Voltron immediately begin firing at the Mech, but it's too late. Honerva enters the rift and unleashes all her weapons, shattering all of reality.

Everyone stares in horror as they are engulfed by a white light.

Notes:

Yes, reality was destroyed here because Shiro didn't let Slav look over the fruit they got in "Launch Party". (Don't get the joke, then go back and re-read the pat where Shiro and Hunk are shopping)

So, I'm not sure how well everything works, there is a lot here that gets thrown at you all at once, but I'm really trying to tie up loose ends. Unfortunately, since the creators didn't give explanations for/ wrap up story elements earlier, it all gets resolved now.

I didn't think giving the Rift the timey-whimey mechanics of being able to send the corrupted guardian to the past was too far fetched. The Rift already had canon time dilation effects in the story when the Paladins fought inside it with Lotor. I figured the rift itself could have all sorts of abnormal time related properties to it. So as long as it didn't break the universe and tells a good story, having it send something to the past wouldn't be too far fetched.

For the paradox that the Guardian causes causes, I just really liked the idea. Honerva corrupts the guardian and sends it to the past where it corrupts her and waits in the rift until it is freed by Honerva and is finally purified by Allura.

I also think it gives some deeper story elements to those who were effected seeking Quintessence. What part of that could be is the creature inside of them seeking a way to return the rest of itself to the proper universe. It drives its hosts to continually need and seek Quintessence. What is the ultimate source of Quintessence? The rift where the creature is. Once they open the rift to get their Quintessence, it can get free.

Now, I know Allura being able to draw the quintessence to Voltron is a complete ass pull, but I needed something to work, and while this is no excuse, the creators did all kinds of thinks like that as well. It's stupid to suddenly give her this ability, I know, but it serves the story. And I want to emphasize that this isn't something she would normally be able to do, It's only because she's on Oriande and has a magical connection to the place that allowed her this one time ability.

I also wanted to 'canonize' Hyperphase Voltron in my version. I know it was just a toy repaint, but it was really cool looking. And the description for the toy completely fit my story here:

"Voltron team taps into Princess Allura's unique connection to the Quintessence and imbues the Lions with this energy, upgrading their weapons systems and supercharging this robotic defender!"

The picture up there was a screen edit done by me. P

So, one final episode left! It may take me a couple weeks to post it, cause I want to make a drawing to go alongside it, but it will come.

Have a wonderful day! FINAL PART

#keith voltron #princess allura #lance mcclain #hunk voltron #voltron #voltron pidge #takashi shirogane #mywritings #MyVoltronSeasonSummary

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chibiarmygeneral · 6 years ago

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The Case of Lotor

I’m trying to do a fix-it fic and have been thinking about a lot of different plot points, keeping a lot of what happened in canon but differing certain situations. When it comes to Lotor, I toss back and forth with him. I liked Lotor and it would be easy for me to just erase the second colony storyline all together and move on. A lot of people enjoyed Lotor because he was abused and still tried for the better. People felt represented and it was understandable they were upset when he was killed as he was deemed ‘just like his father’, his abuser. But I also know people wanted him as a villain and could just write it off as me trying to ignore his wrongdoings by erasing them. Therefore, I’m trying to come up with a middle ground.

The big ‘issue’ is the second colony, where we learn Lotor had siphoned off the remaining Alteans of their quintessence. Now here is the question: why? Why would Lotor do this? To be honest, we are never given an explanation at all about it. In the entire show, quintessence is this mysterious thing that’s supposed to be the soul of all living things, but it’s turned into a power source. In Season 2, Haggar makes the Komar that absorbs a planet’s quintessence, killing the planet of any life. When Lotor is held captive with Voltron and questioned by Allura and Kuron in season 5, he says he didn’t want to destroy planets. If he isn’t getting this energy from planets, where else is he going to get it from? This is where the colony comes in.

Here is my reasoning: destroying planets means the destruction of entire ecosystems and viable living space for people. We are shown a lot of habitable planets but I’m doubting all planets are livable or if it is, it’s to a specific set of aliens that are adapted to it. Where are they supposed to go now? People will eventually get overcrowded in the remaining planets and who knows if they’ll adapt to their new environment. Now when it comes to people, by taking a small set of people and spreading it out over generations, you allow the population to reproduce and grow constantly. You can still get the energy you need by removing a small portion and keep a continuous flow rather than a one and done deal where there is lost of lots of valuable resources and the reformation of planets can take hundreds of thousands of years, plus however many more to make it a suitable place to live.

Now before saying “Cool motive, still murder” and leaving, let me finish. I’ve watched Madoka Magica and small spoilers from that anime because this is where I got the idea from.

Entropy is described in Madoka Magica as the loss of energy. That we consume more than we create and because of this the entire universe is slowly dying out. To combat this, Kyubey, an alien comes to earth to grant wishes of young girls who are candidates and by turning their souls into their powers, it releases a great amount of energy that defies entropy, creating more energy than what is used.

I always viewed Lotor’s second colony as Kyubey taking the energy from the magical girls for the survival of the universe. However, where Lotor differs is where Kyubey is from an alien race that can’t comprehend emotions and view it as a mental disorder of sorts, Lotor we know is a very emotional person. His emotions are part of his drives to make change, he was ostracized for being a half-galra so he employed half-galra, his father tried to hide his Altean heritage, he gathers all that he can about the Alteans. Since it happens so quickly, we never get to see how Lotor felt about the colony and that’s where I think his potential for redemption still lies. If he felt nothing and saw this as purely a way to gain power then that’s that. But I think it stands to reason that he did feel guilty about it. We are given a flashback of when Zarkon destroyed the planet that Lotor, instead of conquering it like he was ordered to, chose to work along side the people. He showed absolute devastation to it and he subsequently got punished further by being banished. How could this person who put himself on the same footing as the inhabitants of this planet that he had no connection to be able to sacrifice his own people? People that he has shown to have a lot of respect and admiration for, considering how he always praised Allura and felt envious of her about being Altean. Why would the staff show us that Lotor felt this way if there wasn’t some sympathy to be gained from it and show that Lotor does feel for the lives that were lost.

Now some may argue that this was them pandering to the fans, but this story was brought up when Allura and Lotor were going to Oriande, seasons prior. Not to mention that there was a short break between seasons and that animation is done months in advance by the time it released to the public, I doubt the crew changed much regarding the fans, if they changed anything. If there is someone on staff saying “we changed x,y, and z for the fans” then feel free to add that but I’d say for the most part that what we were given is what they wanted and decided to show us.

Let’s look at what else Lotor does. He fights Throk who wanted to overthrow him and beats him claiming that they should allow others to join the empire and those that don’t “will be crushed” and the Galra cheer for him. Immediately after, he says to his generals how “the masses are easily swayed” this can come off as him being dishonest to the people but he’s right as he knows what the people want, what they have been doing for thousands of years, if he wants them on his side, he needs to say the things they want to hear. What matters is his actions and the only reference point we have is on Puig. When the generals come in, Lotor specifically ordered that they were contained and not killed, that’s what they do. They talk to the leader of Puig and he says how he doesn’t want his people to be enslaved again and Lotor claims they won’t but be part of the empire.

Now what does that mean? What does being part of the empire entail? Does it mean you support their cause and send in resources when they need it? Do you set up a system of trade between their different aligned factions? If that’s the case, isn’t that the same as being part of the Voltron Alliance/Coalition? We have talks of people joining them and we know from the battle of Naxzela that we had these same people fighting for them. So, what exactly is different other than the name? We are never given any indication from Team Voltron when they work with Lotor that they disagree with his politics. Granted, we aren’t given anything about that in general but if they wanted to show that Lotor was different from them then why not show conflict here? We never see them argue about how Lotor should run the empire, so it stands to reason that his ideas aren’t “bad” or at least our heroes approve of his methods.

We don’t see the Puigs again, so I have no clue if they are with the empire or Voltron or whatever happened to them. We might have seen them in the background in some scenes, but it’s never covered on what they chose, empire or not, and how Lotor reacted to it.

Lotor kills Narti but we know that Haggar was using her to spy on them and Lotor managed to figure out that Narti was a spy. I’ll be honest, I’m still a little miffed how he managed to put 2 and 2 together as he didn’t see Narti look towards Haggar (and I’m not sure how Haggar got control in the first place. Like could she always do that from a distance just by looking at someone? Why not do this on everyone? Can we get an explanation please!). Regardless, he realizes she’s the leak and as far as he knows, she can no longer be trusted and in order to protect himself and his other generals, he had to kill her. We once again aren’t given the time to see his reaction and he clearly doesn’t explain anything as that’s the whole premise on the generals betraying him but I’d like to think that while in the moment there was no hesitation because of fight or flight, he likely did feel remorse for killing what he thought was a comrade or at the very least felt hurt by her betrayal. (No clue if Narti was aware of it happening but given Kuron had no clue, I think it’s safe to say she didn’t and it’s unfortunate it had to happen to her.)

He was willing to allow Voltron to be sucked into that vortex that had the Altean ship stuck in it and that caused them to go to a different reality. We know that people had died trying to pass through, as Zethrid talks about them exploding like fireworks, but Lotor is positive that Voltron, being made from the transreality comet will make it. For him, it’s a win-win. If Voltron gets the comet, he can take it, if they get stuck in the other reality then no more opposition from them. Now, why would Lotor want them gone if they want essentially the same thing? Why hadn’t Lotor simply contact them and say how he wanted to make peace throughout the universe? Well, as far as Lotor knows, Voltron wants to get rid of the Galra empire, regardless of who is in control. He could have tried to extend the olive branch, but he has no clue if they are going to accept or not. To him, they are still an obstacle because who knows if they will listen to his reasoning or not, they could be no better than Zarkon for all he knows. We aren’t given any indication he knows what they do to liberated planets and the only one we see him go to is Puig and he says how Voltron couldn’t save them (they are just one group versus the entirety of an empire that can stretch out it’s resources unlike Voltron).

When Lotor fights Voltron in Season 6, he snaps and claims he’d destroy all the Galra, which causes his generals to bounce again. But as I stated before, he is driven by his emotions to do things and it’s likely that after he was called no better than his father that he was driven to that point because he’s spent his life being degraded by the Galra and in no way has any (shown) close ties to his Galra heritage other than Dayak. But here’s the thing, if he truly was just like Zarkon wanted to destroy everything then what was the entire point of the conflict they had? If he really was just meant to be Zarkon 2.0 then they would have had no reason to fight each other. Sure, Lotor might be ‘pretending’ to be better but if that’s the case, why didn’t he enslave the planet he was meant to conquer after he gained their trust? Why still try and reason with team Voltron if the ‘gig is up’? Lotor’s actions don’t add up to him just being a ruthless killer. I don’t think he was ever meant to be this way. I think it was just the staff trying to up his ‘evil’ factor.

He builds the sincline ships in the hopes of going between realities where there is unlimited quintessence. Why is this needed? Because quintessence is used to power their tech and if it’s like Madoka Magica, it powers the very universe. If he succeeds in doing this, he won’t have to drain anymore Alteans because it won’t be necessary anymore. So his ultimate goal is good in the long run because we are given unlimited energy without any consequences of taking planets or lives away.

His main goal was to obtain the energy needed to power the universe, but I have a question. What were they using before? If they always used quintessence then how did the obtain it? What happened to other resources if they had them and why couldn’t they keep using it? Why use quintessence? We know it’s a pure source of energy as in the flashback in Season 3 with Honerva researching the rift. They had an experiment that this little bit of energy was able to power a device for over a year without any degrade in quality. So we know it’s powerful and Honerva wanted to continue searching for more of this energy while Alfor wanted to look elsewhere.

So was the universe decaying due to the lack of energy or not? Was the search for quintessence necessary or not? I always viewed the universe slowly dying due to entropy as stated in Madoka Magica and that’s why they needed the quintessence (aside from Zarkon and Haggar supposedly using it to stay alive, that’s never really explained on how that works either). If the universe needed more energy, then how did Voltron solve this problem after the fact? They never explain in the final episode when all realities are restored about how they dealt with this lack of energy source because that seems to be the sole reason for Lotor doing what he did with the second colony and getting the sincline ships to be able to move through realities. Was it a problem or not? Because if there was never an issue then there is no reason for Lotor to have set up the second colony because energy was never in need. The sole thing that made him ‘evil’ is called into question because of this inconsistency. The Galra empire used quintessence so what were they using after the war ended? Did their tech just stop working after a while? What did they do to combat this? What exactly happened to the empire anyways? Who knows!

Anyways, I just wanted to get this out there and try to organize my thoughts. I tried my best to explain my reasoning for his actions and while I don’t approve of the second colony (He should have came clean about his intentions but he would have severely depleted his resource if he had done that so he likely felt there was no other choice but to lie about it) I can see why it happened and sort of the idea that was probably intended for it but it just doesn’t make overall sense due to it coming out of nowhere at the end, even though the staff intended him to be a villain all along, they didn’t bother adding in potential conflicts with him amongst team Voltron all for the surprise turn around at the end. Then the entire point for needing the energy, what should be the entire point of the second colony, is never brought up and now uncertain if it was important or not. This destroys the entire ‘reason’ they had him being ‘evil’ for. All I can see he was basically a ‘good guy’ with a heel-face turn all for a ‘gotcha’ moment.

#voltron #voltron: legendary defender #vld #lotor vld #lotor #zarkon #haggar #honerva

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