Lance was sixteen when he got his acceptance letter for the Galaxy Garrison.

He had finally finished school,. He was done with learning about all the useless subjects. He had gotten alright grades, meaning that he barely scraped a pass, in them, but he also got good enough grades in PE, Physics and Maths to join the Galaxy Garrison, a long-time dream of his, ever since learning that they weren't from this planet, ever since learning that there were other aliens that had destroyed his previous planet and had murdered most of his species, with the rest working for the empire.

Naturally, he never told anyone.

And look how well that turned out.

The flashing words that told him that they had failed a simulation, again, were beginning to annoy Lance, just a little.

"Roll out, donkeys! Well let's see if we can't use this complete failure as a lesson for the rest of you students. Can anyone point out the mistakes these three so-called cadets made in the simulator?" Huffing, Lance lead his team out of the simulator to stand at attention in front of the class, again, while Iverson nit-picked at their mistakes, their inability to perform individuality as well as their incapability to work together as a team, going on to say that their mistakes were the same as the ones that the men on the Kerberos Mission made.

Of course, he just had to bring up the failed mission in front of Pidge, who was weirdly passionate about what happened, or at the very least, finding out what happened, if her flaring quintessence said anything about it.

The sooner he passed this class, and therefore stopped having to do these stupid human based simulations, the better.

"What did you say?" Lance went over to cover Pidge's mouth with his hand, muffling the protests that came out of her mouth, trying to make sure that Iverson had less reason to punish them.

"Sorry sir. I think he hit his head when he fell out of his chair. But, point taken." He internally winces at the intentional misgendering, feeling the way that Pidge's quintessence wants to argue against it, but can't because of… something. He wasn't about to route into her head to find out of course, that wouldn't be right, but, it would be nice to know why she thought that pretending to be a boy was the way to go about getting her answers.

Ah, the mysteries that humans hid themselves under.

Lance zoned out as he listened to Iverson drone on about how Kogane would be so much better if he were here instead of being kicked out, and how he shouldn't follow in his footsteps, and instead turned his thoughts to the Blue Lion, who won't leave him alone, at all.

At first, it was nice to hear a constant purr in the background, comforting to get random thoughts when he was feeling low after a bad test or a session with Iverson. But, now, she kept showing him his own memories of the humans that he had met in the last months, or even just knew of when it came to Captain Shirogane, and insisted that they stay at the forefront of his mind, bringing them back up when he was supposed to be doing something, like studying for a test, or flying a simulation.

He wondered what she was trying to tell him.

(That was a lie, he knew what she was going on about, it wasn't a coincidence that they had pure quintessence cores like him, but he wasn't ready to accept it. He couldn't find it in himself to be surprised, but he's not ready, none of them were, really.)

(It didn't matter, though. They still had time.)

"C'mon man, lets go back to the dorms, yeah?" Hunk smiled and led the way, expecting Lance to follow and catch up behind him, which he did, smiling and nodding along to whatever Hunk was saying, however, he was still lost in thought.

He blamed it entirely on the Blue Lion, and the way that she demanded his attention like a child trying to impress their parent, which then caused her to growl at him through their new bond, but, he knew that some of that attention was directed to the buzzing phone he leaves on his desk, charged but unchecked.

As soon as they entered the dorm, Lance quickly went from the flight suit, mandatory to wear during simulations to help zone you (it really didn't) and back into normal jeans and a bomber jacket, as they didn't have any other lessons for the day, his phone suspiciously silent. Sighing, he laid out on his bed, stretching his limbs as he tried to relax and not think about how he was going to fail, meaning that he'll have to go back to Cuba empty handed, to a family who wouldn't mind him failing if it meant that he stayed on Earth and didn't leave them. He took a deep breath and slowly released, as if he was starting a meditating session like Abuela taught him, in hopes to try and breath the stress out of his body, closing his eyes to limit the stimulations on his body, calming his breathing, calming his min-

pleaseGalraVoltroncomingmyPaladincollectpleaseGalraVoltroncomingmyPaladincollect

Lance sat up at the intruding thoughts, gasping at the Blue Lion's intruding and broken thoughts that she was practically shoving into his mind, making it hard to think of anything else. He could he Hunk ask him a question in the background, but the words didn't reach his mind for him to comprehend, instead, the cries of the Blue Lion made his ears ring and the revelations made it almost impossible to breath.

The Galra were here. They were here for the Blue Lion, they had found the Blue Lion and the Blue Lion wants to form Voltron with a bunch of humans.

He could almost see already how wrong this was going to go.

"Lance, are you alright?" Blinking Lance turned towards his friend, feeling the way that Hunk's quintessence seemed to be reaching out to something, but it wasn't sure what it was supposed to be grabbing.

"Hm, yeah, I'm fine. I just had the perfect idea to get the three of us to bond as a team!" Lance stated as he jumped of his bed and picked up a backpack, and started to pack the things that you would usually pack if you were going to sneak off the site to go to town, and was able to put a couple of things of things that one should pack if they were going to sneak off site to leave the current galaxy they were in, like a change of clothes, his stash of sweets (because he doubted that they'll have any Fruit Pastels in space) and only some of his face care creams.

"And what exactly is that plan?" Hunk asked, warily eyeing his actions, thought he was taking no mind of what he was packing. As much as lance wanted to get his friend to pack as well, Lance doubted that Hunk would currently believe him if he tried to tell him that he was going to be a pilot to a giant space robot in the shape of a lion, because it really was one of those 'seeing is believing' situations.

But, was it really fair on him to drag him towards the Blue Lion, when he didn't know where she laid nor where two of the Paladin's were. He didn't even know who was the Black Paladin! He knew about Yellow, Green and Red because of Hunk's, Pidge's and Keith's pure quintessence cores, but he didn't even know where Keith had gone after he was kicked out. If he didn't have all the Paladins with him, then they wouldn't be able to get to the Blue Lion because of the enchantments, unless he tried to break them himself, which would take too long because by then the Galra would already be here.

His phone vibrated once, one new message, and it pulled him out of his thoughts.

At the end of the day, the Blue Lion considered him to be her Paladin. If the Galra were going to take her, well, they could take him too, and he'll just tell them that the humans were just that. Humans.

"We, my friend, are going to kidnap Pidge and hit the town, relax a bit, bond as a-" Lance smiled, hiding his concerns behind the grin on his face. Hunk, it seemed, had different plans.

"Nononono, Lance, you're not being serious? Sneaking of campus, that's just going to us in so much trouble." Hunk argued, and Lance laughed away his concerns.

There were bigger things to worry about than a punishment from Iverson.

"No it won't, because they're not going to catch us." Lance replied, smiling at Hunk's groan, and went to leave the room, only to hear his phone vibrate again. Turning around, he looked at it, taking in every scratch and dent it had gained over the years.

This would be the last time, much much sooner than he hoped.

Going over to his phone, he had pulled up Catharyne's number, ignoring all the texts above about how he didn't go home for the spring break, and began to type.

His family were all going to kill him if they ever saw him again.

BlueChild: im going off to town for a while

BlueChild: theres some guys im meeting out there

BlueChild: theres going to be five of us going

BlueChild: ill be back

BlueChild: promice

"We shouldn't be doing this."

Lance sighed as he turned back towards his best friend, who was now also in his normal clothes. He hated the fact that he was bringing Hunk with him, hated the fact that he was still lying to his friend and taking him away from his planet.

He didn't want to think of what would happen if he left him behind though.

"You heard Commander Iverson. We need to bond as a team. We're going to grab Pidge, hit the town, loosen up, meet some nice girls-"

"Okay, I'm-I'm just, I'm just saying this here right now, on the record: This is a Bad Idea." Lance rolled his eyes at Hunk's response, but couldn't help but agree with the statement.

"You know, for someone on a space exploration program, you don't have much sense of adventure." Lance muttered before turning down a corridor, making sure to look out for guards. So far, they had been lucky enough to miss them, only hearing their voices as they announced different corridors clear of anyone other than themselves. He went to move through the corridor now that he realised it was clear, only to watch as Pidge left her room with a backpack that seemed to be heaving with technology and scuttled down a corridor that he was sure lead to the rooftops. Off access to students.

"Where is he going?" Lance muttered as he went to follow her, wincing at the wrong pronoun and ignoring the protests Hunk seemed to have about following their team member. This wasn't part of the plan. The plan was to get the three of them to the Blue Lion and maybe explain to them what's going on, as he was sure they wouldn't be able to go much further than that without an explanation, and wonder where to go from there.

By the time the pair of them got to the rooftop, Pidge had already set up their computer and the other gear that Lance couldn't even begin to name. she was looking intensely at the screen with her headphones in.

"So, you come here to rock out?" Lance asked by lifting up her headphones just to make sure he3 was heard, only to jump back at her scream, laughing at her reaction. Pidge, however, didn't look so happy.

"McClain, you're lucky that I'm not killing you." She muttered, readjusting her headphones, frowning at what ever she heard, before muttering inaudiably, typing fast on her laptop that Hunk seemed very curious about the technology.

"Where did you get some of this stuff? I didn't think that the Garrison had some of this tech, let alone lets the students have it during down time." Hunk exclaimed jealously, trying to poke the unknown tech only for Pidge to yell at him for it.

"I have you know that I built this. With it, I can scan all the way to the edge of the solar system." There was pride in her voice, more so coming from her quintessence, almost as if she was trying to prove something to the other's in her team.

"All the way to Kerberos, maybe?" Maybe it was a bit out of order for Lance to say this, as she wasn't the only one hiding secrets, but he was curious. Pidge groaned, then yelled at Hunk again for almost touching her tech.

"You ballistic every time it's even mentioned! Look, if we're going to bond as a team, we can't have any secrets." Lance stated, and ignored the fact that he's not telling them his secret, that he can still hear the Blue Lion's demand to do something, even if he doesn't know what that something is and how to execute that something.

"Fine. The world as you know it is about to change. The Kerberos mission wasn't lost because of some malfunction or crew mistake like they said." None of this was world changing for Lance, but he hated its implications, and the nudges from the Blue Lion about Captain Shirogane seemed less weird and out of place now. The look of confusion on Hunk's face really told him that these humans were still not ready to learn what lied beyond their planet.

They didn't have much of a choice anymore.

"I've been scanning the system and picking up alien radio chatter…" Pidge trailed off, smirking at the look of disbelief from Hunk and the raised eyebrows from Lance. "They keep repeating one word: Voltron-"

Lance stomach dropped.

Did they know that the Blue Lion was on Earth? How? His family have been protecting the site of it's landing for centuries now. Something must have happened for them to suddenly start looking for it, especially since it's been 10'000 decapheobes since they were last seen.

Except, Zarkon was still alive, or well, alive as you could be for a 10'000 decapheob old dictator.

"It's a ship!" Lance was suddenly thrusted back into the conversation by Pidge's shouting, pointing towards a UFO that crashed into the desert not even a mile away from the Garrison. Fear gripped him, clawing at his sides and tearing them apart.

They were here already.

"That's not one of ours," he muttered, and vaguely listening to Pidge agree with him, and Hunk come to believe that aliens were a thing.

The Blue Lion had gone oddly silent, but there was an air around the bond that shows that she was pleased with what had just happened.

Lance didn't know what was pleasing about the Galra invading.

Lance lead the trio down the cliffs, his eyes never leaving the ship that had crashed landed rather spectacularly into the desert floor, uprising so much untouched dust and dirt that it was hard to find oxygen in the dirty air. He half-listened to Hunk mumble about going back to the barracks, his nervous quintessence not helping to calm his own as Lance's hand reached into his pocket to grasp the crystal, hoping that it will settle the unease.

"They've set up a camera in there, and I've managed to grab the feed. Look!" The screen filled with grainy images from inside the tent, with the most recognisable people in there being Commander Iverson and-

"That's Captain Shirogane." Lance muttered, and he could feel the smugness just roll off the Blue Lion like an incoming tide, something that he really wasn't in the mood to deal with that moment in time, as this proved that Paulyne was right (not that he was ever going to say that to her face of course). They watched in a confused wonder at the screen as Iverson interrogated him, then went to seduce him.

"We have to get him out." Pidge muttered, something that Lance agreed with. Shirogane was important to Voltron, if the Blue Lion was correct, and he wasn't about to insult the 10'000 decapheob old robotic beast that could squash him like a bug.

"How are going to do that? It's not like we're going to have something conveniently happen that will bring the attention away from the ship. So, what I suggest, id that we sneak back to the dorms, and pretend that this never happened." Hunk suggested, but as he turned to go back to the main building, several explosions went off simultaneously.

"Is that the aliens? Are they here? They got here so quick!" Lance felt his breathing stutter at Hunk's words, and he tried to calm his breathing. It was too fast, he wasn't prepared, and his family wasn't here to give him back up against any Galra, and he didn't know how to fight without quintessence, a undersight on his part.

"No, those explosions were a distraction, for him. The Garrison's headed towards the blast, but he's sneaking in from the other side." Lance looked towards where Pidge was pointing, and his eyebrows raised in shock when he felt a weak pulse of pure Red quintessence.

No quiznaking way was he going to save Shirogane, at least, not on his own.

(Voltron was about being a team form what the legends say, after all.)

He gave some lame excuse about being able to recognise Keith by his mullet as he scaled down the cliffs, the rest of the group following quickly after him, but he quickly lost them in his race to catch up with Kogane.

By the time he got there, Keith had already tried to lift Shirogane up so he could leave, but he was obviously struggling with the weight. Sighing, Lance went over to his other side, flinching when his hand came into contact with the robotic arm as what felt like ugly slime crawled down his neck and almost whispered sins into his ear. It was almost loud enough to drown out the feel of Shirogane's own core, a pulsing Black.

This is it. Voltron was here.

"Who the hell are you?" Lance stared at Kogane, who was glaring at him as if he wanted to burn two identical holes into his brain.

"Uh, the names Lance. I was in your classes before you decided to drop out." No response other than a blank face. Nice to know he was noticed. "You know what, never mind, let's just get out of here, yeah?"

They left the tent, and the five of them managed to fit onto some hoverbike that Keith was able to get hold of during his time away from the Garrison. With a little arguing and Keith throwing them off a cliff, they left the Garrison behind them, not even looking back.

Behind them was a buzzing phone and concerned families, but in front of them, Voltron awaited.

Lance was seventeen when he broke through the enchantments on the Blue Lion, falling through the floor with four other people, four humans who had pure quintessence cores like him, one of them he only met that day.

When he looked up to stare the Blue Lion in the eyes, to feel her quintessence enter his mind again in the most natural way and fill it with so many painful memories of the past, for her to tell him that he was 'her Paladin', for some of his questions of the last year to be answered.

He was so grounded when his family finds out.

He was so glad that he had finally met Blue in person, met the reason why his family were on such a beautiful planet, met the person who was going to take him away.

He had left his phone to vibrate on his bedside table; he never got to say a proper goodbye.

A.N. This is the final chapter, as you can tell. The next story will be called Yellow, so look out for that!