The group spent the night at a lonely shack in the desert. The morning sun was still rising when Pidge gently woke Elle up from her slumber. It couldn't have been earlier than 8 in the morning from the looks of it. Looking around the room, Elle immediately noticed Shiro wasn't on the couch where they had placed him the night before.
"Where'd Shiro go?" Elle asked Pidge. Pidge motioned to the front door.
"He went out to get some air. After all that time in space, I wouldn't blame him. Keith is out there with him too." Pidge explained. Elle nodded, still having no idea why Pidge woke her up. Taking the opportunity, Elle decided to ask Pidge a question. Taking a quick survey around the room, it looks like both Hunk and Lance went back to sleep.
"Hey, Pidge," Elle said in a whisper, "Pardon me if this is wrong, but are you-" Her attention immediately went to the front door opening. Keith and Shiro were coming back in. "Um, never mind. Another time, okay?" Pidge looked back at Elle with furrowed brows.
"Alright."
Elle and Pidge nudged Lance and Hunk awake, respectively. Lance opened his eyes and immediately smirked.
"Girl if I could wake up-"
"Save it, just get up. Keith is showing us something." Elle said, not believing that his first waking instinct was to flirt.
Lance grumbled to himself something about Keith and attention. Elle brushed it off, turning her attention to the sheet that Keith had taken a hold of.
When Keith ripped off the sheet it looked like a conspiracy board from television shows. It was complete with question marks and different colored threads connecting different pictures to a singular map in the middle. It was clear Keith was searching for something, but he admitted he didn't know what it was exactly. Keith pointed out the most obscure piece of his complex puzzle.
"I stumbled across this area. It's an outcropping of giant boulders and caves covered in these ancient markings. Each tells a slightly different story about a blue lion, but they all share clues about the same event. Some arrival happening last night," Keith said, probably pondering, "Then you showed up."
Shiro turned to the quartet behind him. "I guess I should thank you all for getting me out. Lance, right?" Shiro stretched his hand out to shake Lance's hand. Lance hesitated at first, probably realizing Shiro's hand was what seemed to be an advanced prosthetic. Once Lance returned the gesture, Shiro turned to Pidge and Hunk's direction.
"The nervous one is Hunk. I'm Pidge. So did anyone from your crew make it out?" Pidge asked. Shiro seemed to have a guilty look on his face. Clearly not remembering his time in space very well, probably due to mental trauma.
As Shiro was explaining his lack of memory, Hunk immediately shifted the topic back to aliens. Which she understood was an important subject matter but she still put her hands behind her back, feeling awkward that they kind of forgot to introduce her as Shiro explained what he remembered about 'Voltron.'
Suddenly, Hunk took out a photo and Pidge's bag.
"Hey guys, look, it's Pidge's girlfriend." he said teasing the smaller one. Pidge immediately took the bag back and complained to Hunk.
Elle pulled at her half finger gloves. "Sorry about those two," She directed at Shiro, "The three are a rather, dysfunctional team. I'm Elle, by the way." Shiro outstretched his hand to Elle and she gave his prosthetic a firm shake.
"Anyways," Hunk said after the quick squabble with Pidge, "I started reading his diary and noticed a repeating series of numbers that the aliens are looking for, looks like a Fraunhofer line to me." Hunk explained. He continued to explain what it was to Keith but it sounded like a bunch of scientific jargon that Elle couldn't understand. What she did understand is that Hunk thinks he could build a machine to finally find where this 'Voltron' was.
"Hunk you big, gassy genius!" Lance complimented.
"It's pretty fascinating, really. The wavelength looks something like this," Hunk pulled a piece of paper from his back pockets. Keith snatched the paper from Hunk's hand and held it up against a photo of the desert landscape. The horizon matched the wavelength perfectly.
Everyone banded together and found themselves looking at the rock formation that matched the photo back at the shack. Hunk lead everyone around following the device he made. Eventually he did find a cave that was covered in lion markings like Keith said.
Elle observed the different markings, seeing rings and lion. Suddenly they emitted a blue light, shocking her and everyone around her. A circle of blue light ran around the group and caused them to fall through a sudden hole, everyone falling as if it were a water slide.
Elle landed roughly on her stomach, she tried getting up but was immediately forced down by the sudden weight of another body. Then the unpleasant feeling of water entering her nose as Pidge and Hunk landed and created a large splash. She flipped her black hair out of her face and looked at the person keeping her pinned down, it was Keith.
"Um, you mind?" She asked, hoping he'd get up sooner. Her wet shirt clinging to her skin already felt unpleasant enough. He swiftly got up and helped Elle up to her feet. She thanked Keith then that's when she saw a large mechanical lion standing in its blue glory. It must have been the Voltron that seemed so important.
"Does anyone get the feeling this is staring at them?" Lance asked. The lion had no pupils so there wasn't really a way to tell.
"How do we get through this?" Keith asked as he touched the force field.
"Maybe we just have to knock." Lance said as he knocked on the field. At Lance's touch, it broke apart and suddenly all Elle could see was a gigantic mechanical being with a flaming sword. Just as sudden as she saw the vision, she was back in reality. A collective "Woah" coming from the group.
"Did everyone just see that?" Lance asked.
Hunk looked absolutely dumbfounded, "Voltron is a huge, huge awesome robot!"
"And this thing is only one part of it! I wonder where the rest of the pieces are." Pidge thought out loud. Everyone gave their sentiments about what they thought about the lion.
"If it's an alien ship, how do they know what lions are?" Elle wondered.
The lion bent down, bringing its head closer. Pidge and Hunk shouted in fear as Elle shifted to her left to stand in front of them, hoping to give them any sense of security. The lion then opened its mouth, revealing a ramp to enter the lion. Lance, feeling ballsy, decided to run up the lion. Elle and the others followed suit.
Upon entering, the lion appeared to be more like a ship from the inside. Lance was already sitting in the pilot's chair, the lion seemed to already be turning itself on. In front of everyone was a clear view of where they were just standing. It fascinated Elle to see the advanced technology of the ship.
In the midst of everyone's amazement, Hunk spoke up. "I feel the need to point this out, just so we're all aware. We are in some kind of futuristic cat head right now."
"Did you hear that?" Lance asked. He seemed to focus on the dashboard. "I think it's talking to me." Lance then pushed several buttons, causing the lion to let out a fierce roar. Lance then pushed forward on the handles and the lion burst through the cavern walls and flew through the air effortlessly.
Then suddenly the lion started doing flips and turns, everyone had to grab on to a part of Lance's chair. Screams filled the cockpit as the lion flew roughly through the sky.
"You. Are the worst pilot. Ever!" Keith managed to yell at Lance. The lion shot itself up to the sky.
"It says that an alien ship is headed towards Earth!" Lance said as he kept his eyes locked on the sky above.
"What did it say, exactly?" Pidge asked Lance, doubting the lion was actually speaking to him.
"It's not saying words, it's more like feeding ideas into my brain, kind of." Lance explained.
"Like instincts?" Elle asked.
"Yeah! Like that!"
Hunk then suggested to give up the lion to the aliens since it was what they were after. Shiro immediately shut down the topic.
"There's no bargaining with them," Shiro said with a serious look in his eyes, "They won't stop until everything is dead."
Elle, along with everyone else, gave Hunk a look for suggesting that they give up a piece of the 'huge awesome robot' to genocidal aliens.
"Oh, never mind then." Hunk said sheepishly.
There was a sudden movement in front of them, a large purple ship stood in the path of the lion. Immediately the ship started firing lasers and Lance took initiative to evade the lasers, probably with the help of the lion's auto pilot capabilities. He then started playing with the levers, seeing that the lion could attack the ship.
Once it seemed the job was done they flew away quickly, only to lose whatever distance they created between the ship to be decimated by the sheer speed of the battle ship. Elle tried to get a good look of the planets around them.
"Where are we?" she asked.
Shiro peered above her head. "That's Kerberos. We're at the edge of the solar system."
That observation sent chills and fascination through Elle. Whatever took the Garrison months to accomplish only took this flying blue lion less than a minute.
The battleship had gotten closer to the lion when a ring that looked like the one from the markings Elle recognized from the cave appeared before them.
"This may seem crazy, but I think the lion wants us to go through there." Lance said.
"Where does it go?" Pidge asked.
"I don't know." Lance said. "Shiro, you're the senior officer here. What should we do?"
"Whatever is happening, the lion knows more than we do. I say we trust it, but we're a team now. We should decided together." Shiro looked expectantly to the teenagers. The silence seemed to be a unanimous agreement.
"All right, guess we're all ditching class tomorrow." Lance stated as he flew the lion right in the wormhole.