Author's Note: So this is my first time writing anything for the fandom, and of course, as is my wont, I go in whole hog with an AU. For those of you following me for Detective Conan fics, don't worry, I do plan to get back on top of those as well! I was close to burning out there for awhile and simply decided to take something of a hiatus to get myself back in the zone, so to speak. (Also, real life obligations, those too.)

So again, this is my first fic for this fandom- it's been an idea that's been mulling around in my head ever since I watched season two. This is more or less the prologue to the rest of the fic, and so not much dialogue indeed up in this chapter... oops.

Anyways enough of me, thanks for reading!

Burgundy

Prelude

They'd sent him here looking for something. Something out of legend, something that if found, could turn the tide of the war.

Something that desperately needed to be kept out of Zarkon's hands.

Beyond that? He basically had no idea what it was that he was looking for. Or even where it was, other than which of the massive land masses it was located on. Even then, that gave him a lot of territory to cover, and probably not a whole lot of time to cover it. Who knew when Zarkon's forces would catch wind of it's location- if they hadn't already.

That they were looking, of that they had no doubt.

Still, to think the key to defeating the ten thousand year old reign of tyrant could be found on a planet so backwater, they hadn't even yet managed to leave their own solar system. It almost sounded like a bad joke. He might be serving the cause, but it almost felt more like exile.

(Was it? He wasn't sure. He didn't exactly have the best track record of following orders, after all.)

(Or maybe they'd just sent him because he was short. At least people here wouldn't mistake him for being much younger than he actually was due to his height- here, he came in around an average height for his age.)

He didn't even know if Kolivan actually believed in the legends of Voltron or not. But he'd been given the mission, and he'd sensed this wasn't one of the things that he could argue with him about. Granted, as the leader of the Blade of Marmora, he wasn't technically supposed to argue with him about anything- but again, there was that whole issue with following orders thing.

He'd gotten that from his mother.

(She couldn't decide whether to be angry or proud about it.)

He probably would have fought more if he knew that the mission would involve taking on such an inconvenient form- and even worse, being stuck with it. The Galra might not be shapeshifters, but there were other ways to change one's appearance- and some more than just skin deep. He'd used one of the latter- and until the time came when his mission was completed, and he either located the weapon of legend, or determined that it's presence on this planet was nothing more than a rumor, he wasn't going to be changing back any time soon.

Figures that the race that hadn't even managed to leave their own system yet didn't even know extraterrestrial life existed. And while humans seemed to come in a fair array of colors, they were mostly of earth tones- shades of tan, brown, and peach, not a trace of purple, blue, or even the occasional gray in sight.

They certainly didn't have claws, or fangs, and he couldn't help but wonder how it was they even managed to hear anything with their short, rounded ears. He still hadn't gotten used to having a new, lesser range of hearing, even if he suspected his was still far better than that of your average human.

Inconvenient body was right, he grumbled to himself. How did humans even live like this? They couldn't even identify each other by scent.

And their technology was no better. He'd thought that given their reputation as Earth's premier space exploration program, the Galaxy Garrison would have been the best place to start when it came to searching for what he'd came here for, but he'd quickly learned otherwise. At this rate, he was starting to wonder if it was even worth the trouble he had gone though to enroll as a cadet there.

(Not that it had actually been that hard. Shouldn't a place like this have like, actual background checks? Obviously not, if they'd accepted a student who basically hadn't even existed the day before.)

Even if it did give him a roof over his head, and three meals a day- not to mention the chance to pilot something, anything- even if it was just a simulator most days.

It wasn't nearly enough. To make matters worse, none of the pilots here had any real talent- if one of Zarkon's ships showed up one day, he didn't doubt that Earth would be conquered before the end of the day.

All pilots but one, that was.

Takashi Shirogane.

His assigned mentor.

His mentor, who wouldn't leave him alone.

Be it dragging him to the commissary to eat something other than ration bars (what was wrong with ration bars?), or asking him more questions that he cared to answer, it was quite clear that the older man had almost no intention of leaving him in peace. And while he had a begrudging respect for his skills as a pilot, the last thing he wanted to do was try and make friends with any of the local populace.

He had a job to do, he didn't have time to get involved.

(Some humans were easier to ignore than others. That loud kid in the same class as him, the one whose name kept slipping his mind, was an example. What was that guy's deal, and what even was a mullet?)

The worst part about this one, however, was that it was really hard not to like him. He had a way about him that he couldn't quite describe- something that drew people in, almost like a black hole- if not considerably less deadly. He had no intention of warming up to him, but it was almost like he didn't have a choice in he matter.

When he started calling him Shiro, he was forced to admit defeat. Fine- fine! So he was interested in this one human in particular, big deal. It was fine. It wasn't so bad that he'd let it distract him from his mission.

Not that he had much to show for it, even though he'd been out here long enough to get used to seeing pale skin, purple eyes, and black hair reflected back at him in the mirror. Even though he'd gotten used to be being addressed as Keith, no longer failing to respond to the name he'd picked as a more human alias. It wasn't through any lack of effort on his part either- he was starting to think that whatever this Voltron was, it just simply wasn't here.

But probably wasn't good enough for Kolivan. If he was going to get off this rock, then he needed to be one hundred percent sure it wasn't here.

By the time a deca-phoeb, give or take, depending on the differences between cycles, had passed, Keith thought he was going to go mad.

And to make matters worse, Shiro was leaving. The one human that he had learned to get along with, and he was leaving, flying off into the far reaches of space- or at least, what the humans considered to be the far reaches of space. Beyond this system, even the clunkiest of ships could make the journey in at least a few quintants, if not much, much faster. For the humans, however, the journey would take several of their months- and that was only just getting there.

He half wanted to tell Shiro not to go.

And not just because he would miss him. Please, like that would ever be the case- he'd gotten used to not seeing people for long stretches of time working with the Blade. A few months would pass by in the blink of an eye compared to some of the deep cover assignment that their agents could be sent out on.

He didn't even miss his own mother that much, and he hadn't been able to contact her in deca-phoebs. There was no way that he was going to miss someone who would only be gone for half that time, especially not when he'd only met him a little over a deca-phoeb ago.

No, what he was more worried about was the Galra Empire.

As of yet, he hadn't received any word from Kolivan that they were in the area- he surely would have been notified if that was the case. But though they had showed no apparent interest in Earth as of yet, that was something that could change quickly.

It would be fine, he reasoned at the time. Space was vast, even if the Galra Empire ruled most of it, the Kerberos mission was a small one, made up of no more than three members. It wasn't like any of the other planets in this system hosted sentient life, so they might actually be safer there than here, should the Empire decide to show it's face. They'd probably look right past an uninhabitable moon.

(He'd been wrong.

It wasn't fine.)

He'd yelled at Kolivan, damaged no small amount of Garrison property, swore he'd kill Zarkon himself if given half the chance, and punched one of the commanders, not necessarily in that order. It was the latter that found him tossed out of the Galaxy Garrison, sending him back to the tiny shack that he had staked out when he'd first arrived here.

Shiro was gone.

The news said that he was dead, due to a crash- but he knew it was filled with lies. Pilot error, they'd said- as if Shiro was some kind of incompetent. No, there was no way. He was better than that.

Then he'd heard from Kolivan that one of the Empire's cruiser had been spotted on the edge of the system, and he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that there had been no crash. Shiro, and the rest of his crew, had been taken.

Taken by the Empire.

Him being dead might still very well be true.

And Kolivan was not helping.

He'd kind of expected it. It was clear that he disapproved of the apparent attachment he'd developed to the human- an attachment that Keith didn't even realize ran as deep as it did until he was already gone. He thought it was distracting from his mission- it was- and that it wasn't worth the risk to go and save a single human prisoner.

(Three prisoners, he reminded himself, and would feel guilty for leaving out the other two crew members much later.)

And Keith understood. He understood- but that didn't mean he didn't hate it. Because the Galra Empire being on the edge of the system meant that there was a chance that the rumor of a part of Voltron being here had reached their ears as well. Kolivan couldn't afford him being distracted right now.

As a member of the Blade of Marmora, he should have been used to people disappearing on him. It happened all the time- the mission being more important than the individual was something that had been drilled into his head ever since he was able to walk. But this was different- this wasn't a fellow Blade member, one who knew exactly what it was that they were getting into, but someone who had nothing to do with the conflict at all- someone whose only crime was being in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

It wasn't right.

To sit back and do nothing just didn't feel right.

It was enough to make him want to punch someone- which, yeah, he kind of did. Broke their jaw too. His senses might have been downgraded upon taking this form, but if there was one thing that hadn't changed too much, it was his physical strength.

He didn't regret it one bit, but it did result in him being exiled again- to the desert, this time. Whoops.

That was also around when he felt the energy for the first time.

He didn't know what it was at first. It might have been his imagination, the heat of the desert getting to him- until he sensed it again, and then another time, and Keith came to understand that it was very real. At the time, he didn't think that it was what he was searching for- but given that he had almost no other leads to work with, it was worth looking into.

Kolivan had given him a slightly odd look when he'd reported as much back to him, but at the time, Keith hadn't thought much of it. He was always giving him those kind of looks.

So he searched the desert, trying to find where it was this energy was calling to him from. It wasn't like there was much else he could do while living in a shack in the middle of the desert, and it kept him from dwelling too much on Shiro's disappearance. Kept Kolivan happy too- or at least, as happy as he got, especially when he reported back to him about the cave with all of the strange lion carvings.

He was on the right track.

He'd wonder why it took so long to pick up on this- this energy that got harder to ignore by the quintant. When he later learned who it was that would pilot the Blue Lion, he thought he had his answer- there was that old Earth saying about peas in a pod.

And the Galra Empire drew closer all the while.

The humans didn't even notice.

They were drawing closer- and the writing on the wall was all spelling out the when. There was something there, on the cave walls, something about some kind of event, some kind of arrival, though of what kind, they didn't specify- and at first, he thought all the clues were pointing towards the Galra.

Until he received contact from a fellow Blade, that was.

Brief, to the point, but enough.

Kolivan would have never approved the transmission. But if there was something that he had in common with Ulaz, it was not always listening to orders, to following their instincts, even when they went against the mission.

And his instinct had been to send Shiro home.

But if he wanted to get him, he was going to have to act fast. He didn't know where his pod was going to land, or crash, to be more exact- other than that it was going to fall somewhere on Garrison property. He couldn't- he wouldn't- let Shiro fall back into their hands, not when they didn't understand anything about what it was they were dealing with.

He knew how much the druids liked to experiment with prisoners- and who knew what they had done to Shiro. Ulaz's message had been sent off in such a hurry, that he didn't have time to tell him anything further. He was making himself scarce, having blown his cover to do this. Likely he wouldn't be able to get anything further from him for some time.

If he got the chance, he'd thank him. But right now, he had a mission.

Distracting the humans had been easy- and dispatching the ones in makeshift decontamination area had been even easier. He'd thought about wearing his Marmora armor at first- but the less the humans knew, the better- he didn't want to risk them seeing it, and raising more questions that they didn't even need to know to ask.

Besides, if Shiro had been held captive by the Galra Empire for the past deca-phoeb, the last thing he needed to know was that he was one too. Even if he didn't look like one of them right now.

And it was him.

It was Shiro.

Scarred, with a shock of white hair, and a cyborg prosthetic that he knew at once was Galra tech- but it was Shiro.

Now he just had to get him out of here, and-

"Oh no, no, no, no, no."

What.

"I'll be the one saving Shiro."

What.