For The Stars

Chapter 2: Paladin Bonding

Allura, he decided, was a tyrant; she was basically Emperor Zarkon in friendlier packaging. Ok so maybe she wasn't that bad, but it felt like she had made it her mission to torture them. So far this quintant the princess had set off the castle's alarm system at insane times; insisting that it was to teach them to remain constantly vigilant, locked down the food goo dispensers in kitchens; stating everyone must 'earn' their meals, and tested the castle's weapons by using the paladins for target practice. They'd flown in after the shooting stopped and collapsed on the couch in a large lounge room. Princess Drill Sergeant had scolded them for slacking but honestly, not one of them actually gave a quiznak. Thanks to her early morning alarms, none of them (aside from Lance) had managed to get a full night's sleep.

Coran had allowed them a short break before taking them to the training deck next and Keith was practically salivating. It was beautiful, large, well equipped, and beautiful! There were endless programs that could be run, each offering increasingly more difficult sequences. The room came equipped with an array of training weapons, specialized setups, a gladiator droid, floating droids, and wall mounted practice guns. There was even an invisible electric maze. He'd looked around the room with wide eyes and an even wider smile, fully intent on spending every spare moment here.

While Keith had been particularly excited to try out the maze, he'd unfortunately been paired with Lance. The Cuban just wouldn't listen to him and argued everything. At first Keith had been genuinely trying to guide him safely through, but after 15 dobashes of his confrontational attitude, the Red Paladin purposefully zapped him a few times. It had been oh-so satisfying.

After the maze, they tried an old paladin bonding technique with their lions instead of each other. Coran darkened their visors, removing their ability to rely on their own eyes, and instructed them to instead rely on the lions. Aside from Shiro, it had been a resounding failure. Keith had done a training sequence that was similar, back with the Blades in their simulators, and was expecting to do fairly well. Once again Lance proved to be his down fall, goading him into a competition. He knew better, he really did, but he'd taken the bait hook, line, and sinker - crashing his lion into a sand dune in a misguided attempt to showup the ever-cocky Lance. The fact that this ridiculously annoying boy could consistently pull Keith into the stupid rivalry, continued to baffle him. He didn't know what mystery spell Lance had managed to cast over him but what ever it was, it sucked! But that wasn't the worst part of their training day – oh no, the worst part of training had been the mind melding headbands.

They'd made their way back inside the castle and were now sitting in a circle on the training deck floor, wearing these headbands that supposedly would sync their minds. Coran had instructed them to focus on Voltron, try to imagine coming together to form Voltron with their minds. Displayed in front of each of them, was a little screen depicting exactly what they were focusing on. He could feel the love of family and a deep longing coming from Lance, a hunger and warm comfort coming from Hunk, a focus and sense of duty coming from Shiro, and a powerful drive coming from Katie. Keith was having a difficult time. He wanted to be open like the others, share and focus as he was supposed to, but he had secrets that needed to be protected, secrets that weren't just his to keep. If he focused on home and family like Lance the others would know of the Blade of Marmora and that he was Galra. If he focused on food and comfort like Hunk the others would be curious about the items and soon discover they were traditional Galran dishes, thus revealing him to be Galra. If he focused on his drive and the war like Katie, his Galran bloodlust would give him away. And if he focused on his duty like Shiro, again the Blade of Marmora could be compromised.

Keith sighed heavily and set his hesitant focus to his father's cabin. He could feel the others at the edge of his consciousness and a sudden sense of stability and strength coupled with the scent of freshly tilled earth fluttered across him. "HUNK! Stay out of my head."