Winged Light

Chapter 6

 All was calm in the Castle of Lions. Most of the paladins of Voltron slept peacefully, others preparing for the day. This quiet morning was interrupted by the blaring of an alarm, startling them all.

"Everybody up! Zarkon's attacking!" Allura's voice blasted out of the intercoms throughout the castle. The paladins, bar the youngest who was still recovering from yesterday's events in an Altean healing pod, rushed to the bridge of the building to defend their new home. A certain cuban flirt, however, was ignorant to the alarms as he was wearing headphones and a sleep-mask. "The Castle's about to be destroyed! Go, go, go! We need Voltron now!" commanded the princess.

"Hurry! We can't survive much longer!" The two Alteans stood in the control room of the Castle of Lions side by side, drilling the paladins.

"You've got to sell it a little more." Coran instructed, clearing his throat and snatching the microphone from Allura. "Oh, no!" he screamed, startling the female nest to him. "Allura is dead! Aw, it's horrible! Her head fell off!" the ginger claimed dramatically. "Wait! What? Her severed head is trying to speak to me!" He sank to his knees, clutching the microphone tightly. "What is it, Allura's head? What are your final words?" Artificial tears welled up in his violet eyes. Allura noticed something from behind him.

"Coran." He, however, continued with his production.

"Oh, yes, Princess, I'm listening." She deadpanned at the older man before her.

"It's over." The alarms shut down and the princess stood up straight.

"Oh, I know!" Coran groaned. "If only Voltron had been formed." Ignorant to the others who had entered the room, he went on until he finally noticed them. "Oh! Time!" The microphone in his hand was thrown at the panel behind him.

"I guess this isn't an actual attack." Shiro decided.

"And it's a good thing it wasn't because it took you..." Allura turned to Coran, "Coran?"

He looked at the device in his hand, "Seventy-five degrees." everyone stared at him, confused. "Oh, sorry. No, this is a meat thermometer." The white-haired woman next to him deadpanned once again, before sighing.

"However long it was, it was too long." she stated as she walked up to the four humans in front of her. "You must always be ready to do battle with Zarkon. Look at you!" The Altean gestured to them. "Only Shiro is in uniform. Keith, Pidge, Hunk, where are your bayards?" She looked around once again. "And where is Lance?" The door behind them opened, and in walked a lanky cuban teen wearing a blue bathrobe, Blue Lion slippers, and holding a cup.

"Good morning, everybody. What's going on?" he yawned. Allura answered.

"Coran and I have been up for hours getting the Castle back in order. We had to run a test on alarms, and we decided to test you as well." She glared at them. "Guess which one failed."

"Hey!" cried Hunk, his oncoming sentence interrupted by a yawn. "You got to sleep for ten-thousand years, man. , I was on Earth. Now I've flown through space, fought some evil alien named Zarkon, eaten goo in some weird castle." the large samoan listed. "That's a lot to process in, uh..." He trailed off. "I-I, uh, I don't know. What day is today?"

"It's the third quintant of the Spicolian movement. Hump day!" Coran answered.

"It's a lot to process." Hunk clarified.

It was Allura who spoke next, "You must understand the stakes of our mission." The Altean princess pulled up a screen. "Over the last then-thousand years, the Castle picked up distress beacons from the following locations." A map of the universe is shown, projected as a hologram around the beings. Most of the planets and systems turn a red that contrasts starkly with the blue that is becoming associated with Altean technology. "So, we have to assume Zarkon has conquered almost the entire known universe."She swipes the hologram to the left. "Earth is here. An attack o your planet is inevitable."