In For a Crazy Ride (Voltron Legendary Defender)

Introduction

Here is the seventh of my eight projects this year.

What prompt are you using?

I'm using number four, "You're hired as a temporary bodyguard/driver for a high profile client visiting your city for a week. It is very important you make sure the client sticks to the itinerary you are given. Only when you arrive are you told the client's identity - a celebrity known for being wild and always getting into trouble!"

What fandom are you writing for?

I'm writing for Voltron: Legendary Defenders, though I've brought in some elements from some of the other Voltron universes such as Ryo Shirogane, Takashi Shirogane's brother from GoLions who was merged with Takashi's character to become Sven.

What do readers not familiar with the fandom need to know?

So, I'm actually not planning on touching upon Voltron in this as said story is planned out as an AU which would take place before the VLD characters find Voltron. I've also been big on Keith (called Keith Akira Kagone or Akira Kagone in Voltron: Defenders of the Universe and GoLions respectively) and Shiro (Takashi Shirogane) being biological brothers since season one aired, all because I saw fanart of Ryo and asked myself, "what would Ryo look like if they brought him in", in other words aged him down like the others and I suddenly realized he'd look like Keith.

16-17 - Keith, Ryo, Lance, Hunk
18-19 - Rachel

Those are the main ones for this story.

"But wait, those aren't the ages"

Okay, so I am actually going with the "five unsuspecting teens" ages for this one, making Shiro unable to become Keith's legal guardian when Keith first entered the garrison program. In fact, all media lists "five unsuspecting teens" even after the release of the character book certain producers admitted they didn't double-check before its release which included comics that Dream Works published after the fact, but the whole so-called "canon ages".

That's from someone taking an answer as "yes" while completely ignoring the "something like that" which came before, but one of the first major wanks in VLD fandom was fans insisting Shiro couldn't be eighteen as at the time the youngest astronaut on record was twenty-five and they refused to listen to us that the record-breaking was stagnated by cuts to the NASA program. Returning to space is still in the works, but just last year the record for the youngest person to ever travel to outer space is eighteen, nor does the fact he's recognized as a "commercial astronaut" make him not an astronaut.

As for Keith's age, the whole argument behind that stems from a.) fans mistaking schools as interchangeable for social services and that the garrison as his school would have to, when he chooses to drop out of school, take on the role of social services rather than reporting him to social services and b.) other fans arguing that there was no such thing as a military academy for the secondary education level - middle school and high school, but that such institutions create child soldiers and c.) they weren't happy the younger four were in fact forced into the roles of child soldiers because of circumstances out of everyone's control.

This is despite having scenes in the final season that shows one can become a cadet at the garrison while one was still middle school-aged.

Don't ask. Really, don't. Just know that I and others have a preference for the "five unsuspecting teens" age range unless the plot would benefit from it. Oh, and we were promised we would get to meet Shiro's family early on, only for it to never happen. No Ryo Shirogane.

What is the inspiration for the story?

So, I think one of the reasons I latched onto the prompt with my head going, Keith and Ryo, Tony Stark, Bruce Wayne, and his boys is because one of the Christmas movies I watched this last Christmas was Crazy for Christmas. It is a very fun movie that would actually fall under this prompt quite well, but it made me think this prompt would be fun to tackle minus of course the wealthy eccentric giving away his cash to random strangers.

Instead, it's about her driving Keith around who she at first thinks is Ryo, along with the Shirogane family politics, although the only other Shirogane family member I plan on bringing in is Ryo who as I said was a GoLion character within the Voltron continuum who never got to show up in VLD. She's also got to deal with her brother Lance, who despite being one of the worst pilots in the garrison's high school program considers Keith to be his rival.

Mainly because Shiro took an interest in Keith.

That's petty much that.

How did I incorporate the prompt?

Rachel (Voltron: Legendary Defedner) finds out she is to drive Ryo Shirogane around, who the media's reported as having issues since his brother Takashi died on the failed Kerberos mission while being blamed for the failure of said mission. In reality, she is the driver of his twin brother Keith, who is the actual one causing trouble only for the media to associate it with him because they think he's Ryo, yet Rachel is noticing there's something more going on. Story works with a headcanon that didn't pan out that I've had since the first season of VLD that came about because I thought Ryo (GoLion's universe only), if a younger version of him were included, he'd look like Keith, only he never ended up included despite Takashi's character, who with Ryo's character became Sven in Voltron, nor was the family of Shiro (Takashi) ever introduced as promised.

Word Count

- Chapter 1 - 1,183
- Chapter 2 - 2,314
- Chapter 3 - 3,586
- Chapter 4 - 4,112
- Chapter 5 - 5,346
- Chapter 6 - 6,711
- Chapter 7 - 7,674
- Chapter 8 - 8,821
- Chapter 9 - 9,255
- Chapter 10 - 10,872
- Chapter 11 - 12,445
- Chapter 12 - 13,026
- Chapter 13 - 14,512
- Chapter 14 - 15,997
- Chapter 15 - 16,344
- Chapter 16 - 18,085
- Chapter 17 - 19,591
- Chapter 18 - 20,592 fin