Greetings, readers! This story came to me while re-watching the old Voltron series, and I worked on it until I got this. Enjoy!

Disclaimers: I own nothing here, Voltron belongs to WEP and Toei, and Cardcaptor Sakura belongs to CLAMP, Nelvana, and Pioneer. I'm just playing around with them. And yes, the CCS characters are going to very OOC, and Haggar may seem slightly OOC during the early chapters. Deal.

The Witch's Apprentice

By Scorpinac

Chapter 1: Student and Teacher

The nightmare began suddenly, as most often do. She was playing in the yard, not a care in the world, when the first laser strike hit, destroying a sizable chunk of the nearby city. She looked upwards at the sky, staring in fright at the fleet of ships bearing down on her world, the insignia of the skull emblazoned on the three largest. Her mother then ran out, scooping her into her arms and running back inside as the ships began to rain down further fire, her dolls forgotten in the grass. Inside, her mother carried her to the basement, where her father and older brother already awaited, her father closing the door behind them as they dove inside.

"Who are they?! What's happening?!" her brother asked, trying to be brave for his sister, and failing miserably as only a nine year old can.

"The Galrans!" her mother cried, and her father said a bad word, the bad word, her brother going silent. Outside they could hear the continuing firing of the ships, as well as the returning fire of the planet's local militia as they finally got off their rears and fought back. The firing continued, and then was joined by the distinctive roar of one of them. She squeezed her mother tighter in her fear, her brother having told her all about them. How they came at night to devour bad little kids – a robeast. But she was a good girl, she knew she was. She didn't deserve to be eaten! The roars were soon joined by voices, the enemy having dropped troops to the ground to do battle with the local militia while maintaining support from the air.

The noise went on for awhile, she wasn't sure how long, it felt like days or even months, but was actually only a few hours. Then they heard it, men moving around upstairs, looking for something, looking for them. They stayed quiet, her mother moving her to her brother's arms while she and her father picked up a pair of heavy objects to use as clubs, a broken chair leg and a bat respectively, and a moment later the basement door opened, three alien troopers stepping inside. They had medium gray skin with yellow eyes and wore light gray uniforms with dark gray arms and legs ending in light gray gloves and boots. She literally couldn't tell one soldier from another, they all looked exactly alike. One turned and shouted something in their alien language back inside the house while they aimed their laser rifles at the family below.

"Lay down your weapons and surrender peacefully," a second spoke to them after tapping something on his collar, a translator.

"Get out of my house!" her father yelled back at them. A moment later another alien soldier appeared at the top of the stairs, this one dressed in a green uniform with a mechanical device at the center of his chest, yellow stripes were along the sides of his legs, and he wore a green cape that was black at the shoulders. His medium blue skinned face was adorned by a green helmet with a white curved horn coming out of each side and a straight one out of the top, the forehead decorated by a yellow insignia. He stared down at them, his own rifle in hand.

"Drop the weapons and surrender, this is your last warning!" he barked at them.

"Like I told him, get out of my house!" her father repeated, and her mother tightened her grip on her makeshift club. The alien just stared at them for a moment, then pointed with his left index and middle fingers, giving the order to fire. And fire he and the other three did, her mother and father falling before her and her brother.

"NOOOO!!!" the two of them cried in shock and horror, and before they could think of anything else the troops had come down the stairs and grabbed them, the green clad one taking hold of her and pulling her out of her brother's grip almost instantly.

"SAKURA!!!" he called her name, the first time she'd even remembered it since the attack on her world began.

"NII-CHAN!!" she cried back, using her planet's local word for "big brother". The aliens ignored them, carrying them out of the house and to some nearby ships, her brother being dragged by two of the multi-gray-toned troops to one ship, and the green clad alien carrying her to another.

"LEMME GO!!! LEMME GO!!! NII-CHAN!! NII-CHAN!!!" she screamed in fright, wanting the safety of at least one family member, and being denied.

"SILENCE!" the alien roared at her, and she quieted down immediately, the alien handing her off to another of the cut-and-paste soldiers who carried her off further into the ship and finally dropped her in a small cell, closing and locking the door behind her. It was small, a bed and a potty and nothing else, barely room for an adult, but otherwise spacious for a lone child. Sakura curled up quietly into a ball, crying to herself over her lost family. After some more time two other girls around her age were tossed in with her, and then one alien commented something to another, the two again speaking the alien language. The other two girls cried as well, whether for their own families or for themselves she did not know, nor cared.

A little more time passed, and then she heard a loud roar coming from the ship's engine and felt, for the first time, the intensity of g-forces as the ship lifted off into space. Sakura glanced up for the first time since the other girls were tossed in, and saw a lone guard sitting outside the cell in a simple chair, cleaning his nails with a file. He seemed otherwise disinterested in her and her cell mates, acting like nothing bad had happened at all. It stirred an anger in her, but at the same time her fear and grief took priority over any other feelings, and she dropped her head back down to cry once more. After a few moments the g-forces ceased and a split second later were replaced by artificial gravity as the ship plunged into the blackness of space.

The next several days passed in a blur for the child, Sakura was not even sure just how long it had been since her capture. Once or twice a day a guard would come by and toss in a plate of food, and he and the ever present guard in the chair laughed in merriment as she and the other two girls fought for their shares of the rare nourishment. The eldest/biggest of the three had been quick in claiming the sole bed, relegating Sakura and the other to the floor. Sakura didn't really care; her mommy was gone, her daddy was gone, her nii-chan was gone, she was really just waiting for the aliens to kill her, too. She wasn't even sure when she'd finally run out of tears, only that she'd had. And then she felt it, the sudden shift from artificial grav to real grav as the engines roared back to life to control the ship's descent onto another planet.

"*We back on Planet Galra already?*" the sitting guard asked someone out of site in his native tongue, an affirmative sounding response following. Only the word Galra had made any sense, and she knew in her heart where they were – Planet Galra, home of the Galra Empire, a place better known to all as "Planet Doom." Her small heart seized in fear again, and a will to live filled her, Sakura crawling under the bed as far back as she could go, right up against the back wall of the cell, and curling into a ball as tightly as possible.

'It's just a bad dream, it's just a bad dream, it's just a bad dream,' she repeated to herself mentally over and over again.

The old witch sighed, stroking her familiar, a blue feline named Cova. It was a quiet moment, and Haggar was lost in thought, mostly centered on the ever inevitable future. The future beyond her life and what it would mean for her beloved planet Galra and the Empire. Her primary concern was that some idiot would mess with something in her lab that was somewhat overly volatile, and then...well, that was actually a worst case scenario, really. But still, she couldn't lie, least of all to herself. Even her dark magic couldn't prolong her life forever. The sad truth was that even that was beginning to fail her. The clock was ticking, and she could reasonably hazard a guess at how long she had left, and it was leaving her just a bit nervous.

What she really needed was an heir, someone to leave all her magics and potions and spells to after she was finally gone from the universe. But who? And did she still have the time to train one? She sighed again, still stroking her cat, when her magical senses suddenly flared up in alarm. A magic aura was approaching, a very large one, and it grew ever closer to the planet by the second.

"Hmm, clearly subtlety isn't this idiot's strong point," she mused to herself as she stood and summoned her wooden staff to her hand, giving Cova one last stroke before exiting the room. She marched resolutely out into the hall to the nearest window, gazing out and spotting a pair of incoming slave ships, the aura clearly coming from the one on the left. It was practically a neon sign screaming, "Here I am, kill me!" Well, she was hardly one to turn down such a clearly engraved invitation, and marched smartly through the castle corridors until she reached one of the ground floor entrances that let out towards the landing docks.

A quick hike across the field between castle and docks and she was there, waiting only momentarily as the slave ships finished landing and shut off their engines before walking inside the docks and heading to the appropriate ship, the aura still blazing strong. As she walked up the entry ramp, some of the guards were just starting to disembark with the first load of slaves, Captain Mogor at the lead, the green clad officer turning in surprise at her appearance.

"What are you doing here, old witch?" he asked, not really trying to hide his contempt for the old woman.

"Pleasure to see you again, too, Captain Mogor," she replied. "You have a magic user aboard this ship, I sensed their aura while you were practically still in orbit."

"A magic user?" Mogor blinked. "You think someone slipped aboard on Planet Tomoeda to try and kill you?"

"If that's the case, my boy, they're extremely arrogant," she stated. "Though frankly my money's on strictly amateur hour." With that she moved passed him into the ship, following the now all but blasting aura into the fourth cell block, past several surprised guards, and finally came to a cell, inside of which was an angry looking four or five year old girl sitting on the lone bed, and a two or three year old one sitting shivering in fear against the wall, her arms wrapped around her legs. Haggar found this curious, as she could tell the aura came from neither of these, but was definitely from inside the cell, which had little room for anyone else, unless...

"You, open this," she ordered the guard. "Now!" she barked when he hesitated, and he jumped up, jingling his keys.

"Yes, ma'am, right away," he barked as he found the right key and unlocked the cell. As soon as the door was open, Haggar pushed him aside and stepped in, walking up to the bed. With her magic, she lifted the girl sitting on it and dumped her unceremoniously on the floor next to the other girl and then focused on the bed.

"Nice try, fool, but next lifetime try pulling this on someone dumber," she commented, and magically lifted the bed up to finally lay eyes on the magic user beneath...and found herself staring in utter shock. The only thing beneath the bed was another little girl, about the same age as the second one she'd noted earlier, curled tightly into a ball, her eyes held tightly closed, shivering in fear. This was no amateur assassin, it was just a child subconsciously tapping a reserve she no doubt had no idea was even there. And her old mind went to work, pointing out to her that the answers to her earlier concerns had just dropped literally into her lap, free of charge!

She shook off her shock and glanced the child over, appraising her find. She was, as stated, young, only a year or two out of infancy, so ready to be molded by the right hands it was almost ridiculous, almost. Her skin was the pale peach of the general human species, her hair a mousy brown done up in two tiny poofs, one on either side of her head, held in place by a pair of tiny white hair ties. She was dressed in a dirty yellow sundress, her feet bare. Haggar turned to the guard and quickly signaled him to have the other two girls removed, quickly and quietly, then turned back to her find. The old witch smiled, bent over carefully, and reached down one old, clawed hand to the child's shoulder, and gave it a small shake.

"It's okay, sweetie, you're safe now," she said in the Tomoeda tongue. "I've come to help you." The girl slowly opened her eyes, the orbs a sparkling emerald green, and stared up at her. Haggar knew her appearance was less then pleasing, her old, dark blue, wrinkled face covered by the hood of her somewhat ragged brown robes with a simple rope belt at the waist, her wrinkled hands hanging out with their pointed nails at the tips of her fingers like claws. But Haggar had always preferred the simple route to clothing anyway, it kept things easy. Haggar had the same yellow eyes as most Galrans, but for now she did her best to gleam kindness from them.

"Safe?" the little girl asked timidly, still staying in her tight ball.

"Yes, dearie, you're safe," Haggar repeated. "I want to take you to my home, to live with me. All I ask is you take my hand." She reached out her free hand to the girl, waiting for her to take it of her own free will, for only if the child came willingly could Haggar claim her. It was an old rule, ancient really, but she dare not cheat it, for to do so ran the risk of the girl one day escaping her grasp. The girl stared some more, not making any moves, one way or the other.

"Who are you?" she finally whispered.

"I am Haggar, a master of magic," Haggar introduced herself. "And I intend to teach you all that I know, if you will take my hand and let me." She kept her hand outstretched, waiting patiently. In this exercise, patience was all.

"I don't have any magic," the child said. "If I did I'd be home and mommy and daddy and nii-chan would all be okay."

"Magic doesn't work that way, dearie," Haggar said in full honesty. "It cannot bring back those who are gone, but it can do many other things, and I know you have the gift, I felt it, it led me here to you."

"It did?" she asked, her eyes showing honest surprise. "I do?

"Oh, yes," Haggar replied. "It did, and you do. You need but learn how to tap into it of your own will, to control it and wield it to your own purposes. All you have to do is take my hand, and I will teach you everything."

"But I'm only three," she said quietly. "I still have accidents." Now Haggar chuckled in amusement at the child's honesty and naivety.

"Everyone does, no matter how old," she said. "Accidents are part of life, and they help us grow and to learn. And the "accidents" I imagine you actually referred to will become less in time, they always do. Now, will you take my hand and let me take you home, dearie?" She managed to smile warmly, doing her best to reassure the child.

"Will you really protect me?" she asked. "Like my mommy?"

"Yes, of course I will," Haggar answered. The girl stared a moment longer, then she finally uncurled, calming down, her aura finally ceasing to flare, and she timidly reached out, and took hold of Haggar's hand. Haggar stood back up, bringing the girl to her feet as she did so, and they stepped out of the cell together, and headed out of the block towards the exit of the ship. "What's your name, sweetie?" Haggar asked, realizing that the child's name had yet to come up.

"Sakura," she answered. "Sakura Kinomoto. It means 'Cherry Blossoms'."

"It's a pleasure and an honor to meet you, Sakura," Haggar replied. Within moments they'd reached the entry ramp and walked out, Captain Mogor noticing them as they left.

"Find what you were looking for, old witch?" he asked, then blinked at the sight of the girl, who scootched in closer to Haggar, still scared of the Captain who had ordered her parent's deaths. Haggar just smiled, her triumph more and more complete.

"Not exactly, Captain, but what I did find was well worth it," she replied, glancing down at Sakura.

"Where are you taking that slave?" he asked.

"Oh, she's not a slave," Haggar said as she began walking with Sakura toward the exit of the docks. "She's my apprentice." Captain Mogor just looked dumbfounded, not sure what to think. "Oh, and don't tell Zarkon or Lotor, I'll let them know when I'm ready to properly introduce her," she added over her shoulder. And with that, she and Sakura exited the docks, and began the small hike across the grounds to the castle, Sakura staying close to her new "mother" as she eyed the overly desolate terrain of Planet Doom.

To be continued.

So, how's that for an opening? More is on the way, rest assured. Sakura-chan's new story has only just begun.

Scorpinac.