"What are you doing?! You're going to kill us all!" Lance yelled over the rushing winds.

"Shut up and trust me!" Keith retorted. Just as they were about to crash into the ground, Keith twisted the handle of the bike, and the hover mechanism came online to immediately stop their descent.

With the people from the garrison left in the dust, Cori and the rest of the group sped off into the desert.

~~~

Cori fiddled with her phone inside Keith’s house while the sun rose outside, swiping her index finger across the screen to draw lines.

She was just drawing an anime character’s face, when she glanced behind her with an inquisitive expression, lifting an ear of her noise-canceling headphones.

“What is it, Lance?” She asked with slight annoyance.

"I had no idea you could draw,” He commented.

She raised an eyebrow. “And?”

"And it looks nice," He said honestly.

She shrugged and put her phone away as Keith and Shiro came into the shack.

She crossed her arms on the couch as Keith walked across the room, and whipped off a cloth that was covering… a conspiracy board. There was no other way to describe the notes and diagrams.

Shiro looked closely at the board, before glancing back at Keith. “What have you been working on?”

Cori examined the board, and her eyes widened when she saw a picture of a blue lion.

"I can’t explain it, really. After getting booted from the garrison, I felt kinda lost and found myself drawn out to this place. It’s like something- some energy was telling me to search.” Keith explained.

“For what?” Cori asked absentmindedly, standing up to stare at the blue lion closer.

“Well, I didn’t really know at the time, until I stumbled across this area,” Keith responded, resting one hand on a part of the map of the nearby terrain that was tacked to the board. "It’s an outcropping of giant boulders with caves, covered in these ancient markings. They all share clues leading to some event, some arrival happening last night. Then you showed up.”

"It’s the blue lion,” Cori whispered. Pidge looked at her questioningly, but Cori was too preoccupied with staring at the board to notice.

"I should thank you all for getting me out.” Shiro acknowledged. Cori twisted back to Shiro as he offered his hand to her. “Cori, right?”

She immediately took his hand and nodded, events playing in her brain now that she finally got a good view of his face.

"It’s an honor to meet you, sir,” she saluted.

Shiro shook Lance’s hand next, and then Hunk and Pidge’s.

“The nervous guy is Hunk. I’m Pidge.” The boy said, pushing up his glasses slightly. “So…. Did anyone else in your crew make it out?”

Shiro looked away, deep in thought, before responding. "I’m not sure. I remember the mission, and being captured, after that, it’s just bits and pieces.”

“Yep, Sorry to interrupt,” Hunk interjected. “But back to the aliens? Where are they? Where are they now? Are they coming for all of us? Like- where are they, at this very moment?”

"I’m not sure. I remember the word ‘Voltron.’ It’s some kind of weapon they’re looking for. But I don’t know why. Whatever it is, I think we need to find it before they do.” Shiro sighed.

Cori nodded with a frown of thought, not disclosing anything.

“Well last night, I was rummaging through Pidge’s stuff, and I found this picture. Look, it’s his girlfriend.” Hunk said with a cheeky smile.

Cori glared at Hunk on Pidge’s behalf. Really. couldn’t he be more provocative?

“HEY! Gimme that! What were you doing in my stuff?” Pidge glared at Hunk.

“Well- I was looking for a candy bar. But then I started reading his diary.” Hunk pulled out Pidge’s diary.

“WHAT?!” The boy exclaimed, snatching it back as well as the picture.

“And I noticed that the repeating series of numbers the aliens are searching for looks a lot like a Fraunhofer line.”

Cori wrinkled her nose. “Frown…what?”

"It’s a number describing the emission spectrum of an element. Only, this element doesn’t exist on Earth. I thought it might be this Voltron. And I think I can build a machine to look for it. Kinda like a Voltron Geiger Counter.”

Cori was mildly impressed, that would likely work. However, she had no idea who Geiger was either, nor why he would be counting things.

“Hunk, you big gassy genius!” Lance exclaimed.

Hunk nodded. "It’s pretty fascinating, really. The wavelength looks like this.” Hunk pulled out a sheet of graph paper, with a wavelength sketched out on it.

“Gimme that.” Keith grabbed it out of his hands and thought for a moment before holding the wavelength graph up to a picture of a mountain range. He pulled it away again, and Cori examined how similar the peaks in the waves seemed to match up to the mountain peaks. …super freaky.

“So we’re totally going there, right? Right, C’mon.” Cori grabbed her bag and draped it over her shoulder as she went out of Keith’s shack.

~~~

A little while later, the team arrived at the location with the help of Keith’s knowledge of the area, and Hunks machine.

As they drew nearer to the base of the rock formations, Cori suddenly felt a bit like she was in a dream. Someone- something was drawing her towards an open cave mouth, and out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw a white creature stalking her, flicking its furry white tail with glaring yellow eyes.

Go in. What you seek awaits you.

She jolted as Keith elbowed her back into reality in time to follow the others into the cave.

“What are these?” Shiro asked Keith, examining colored carvings on the walls.

“These are the lion carvings I was talking about. They’re everywhere around here.”

Cori just stared ahead as she walked, but looked over when Lance yelped, and all the carvings began to glow. “Quiznack!” Cori cursed when the ground gave out under them, and all the others fell into a spring below. Cori somehow managed to grab the rock as she fell, sliding the rest of the way down safely with somewhat scraped hands.

She glanced around the new cavern and stopped awestruck as she saw the same piercing yellow eyes from earlier, but instead of being framed by white, they were contrasted by a blue metallic head, which was attached to an enormous mechanical body.

"Is this it? Is this the Voltron?” Pidge questioned, rubbing his head after he fell into the water.

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Cori had to try hard to restrain herself from chuckling or snorting, or giving any other indication that she knew several things that she shouldn’t.

"It… must be.” Shiro breathed.

“This is what’s been causing all the crazy energy out here,” Keith muttered, approaching the blue lion. The rest of the team followed as well.

"It looks like there’s a… a force field surrounding it,” Cori said, resting her hand against it. She always thought it was cool how the barriers rippled like water when you touched them.

“Does anyone else get the feeling this is staring at them?” Lance asked, walking side to side.

Shiro shook his head, and Cori just shrugged, examining the lion’s lifeless yellow eyes that didn’t seem to be doing much of anything.

“Yeah. The eyes are totally following me.” Lance affirmed.

“How can the eyes follow you if it has no pupils, huh?” Cori drew her lips to a line, unimpressed by his low brain cell count. He didn’t answer her though, seemingly distracted by whatever experience he was having.

"I wonder how we get through this…” Keith poked the barrier.

“Maybe you just have to knock,” Lance said, literally knocking on the forcefield.

Surprisingly, it immediately reacted, dissipating and igniting the surrounding rock faces with blue. That was… not how particle barriers worked.

An image flashed through Cori’s mind of five lions forming a body and limbs, while something else formed the wings. So that was what Voltron looked like. She had been wondering.

“Voltron is a robot!” Hunk exclaimed. “Voltron is a huge, huge awesome robot!”

“And this thing is only one part of it. I wonder where the rest of them are.” Pidge breathed.

“Incredible,” Keith said, scrutinizing it intently.

“So it’s a giant blue mechanical lion.” Cori shrugged.

There was a sudden growl, and Lance Pidge and Hunk freaked out as the blue lion lowered its head.

When they realized the ship wasn’t about to eat them, Lance hesitated, then smirked and walked up into the lion’s open mouth. Cori followed closely behind, gaping at the advanced design of the cockpitCori was immediately struck by the… Altean technology. How did this get to Earth?

Lance sat down in the pilot’s seat, still smirking, but his smirk got wiped off his face when the seat rushed forward, towards the ship’s dashboard, locking into position as if eager to get going.

The others came in after him, making the cockpit far more crowded than it already was.The console activated, and they were finally able to see into the cave outside.

“Woah.” Hunk voiced. The others made similar sounds of awe, but Cori kept her neutral frown, a twinge of worry bubbling up into her mind. The implications of this even being here, of it even being real.

“Alright. Very nice.” Lance nodded, resting his hands on the controls.

“Uh- okay guys, I feel the need to point out- just so we’re all aware- we’re in some kind of futuristic alien cat head right now,” Hunk informed.

All the sudden, Cori got a feeling of vertigo, and looked around, once again seeing the white figure of a quadruped in the corner of her vision.

Trust the lion. A voice echoed inside her head, before she regained her senses to Keith looking slightly concerned in her direction.

“Woah! Did you guys hear that?” Lance asked, and for a moment, Cori thought he was talking about the voice she just heard in her quiznacking head.

“I-I think it’s talking to me.” Lance said, leaning close to the console.

“Hmmm…” he started tapping buttons on the display, and the ship came online with a lion-like roar.

“Okay. Got it. Now let’s try this.” Lance muttered, pushing the controls forward.

Immediately the blue lion burst out of the cave, breaking through rock with almost no effort, and exposing the caverns to the outside world for the first time in conflux movements.

It twisted and spun in the air, and Cori had to turn on the white noise setting on her headphones because everybody was so Quiznacking loud.

"YOU ARE. THE WORST. PILOT. EVER." She heard Keith's muffled voice yell darkly at Lance.

Cori winced as she noted that the blue lion was now in full view of the galaxy garrison, she spotted two dots on the roof that she assumed were perhaps Commander Iverson and another person, perhaps one of the officers.

Cori felt her stomach lurch as the blue lion started running on the ground. What kind of ship could run? Certainly not a normal one.

"Isn't this awesome?!" Lance yelled over the noise of the other's complaints.

"NO!" Cori snapped immediately.

"Make it stop. Make it stop!" Hunk begged, looking like he was about to wretch.

"I'm not making it do anything. It's like it's on autopilot!" Lance said, unapologetically.

The ship lurched, launching off into the sky.

"Where are you going?!" Keith demanded.

"I just said it's on autopilot! It says there's an alien ship approaching Earth. I think we're supposed to stop it." Lance said, shrugging.

"What did it say, exactly?!" Pidge asked.

"Whatever it said, I say we should trust it," Cori said plainly.

"Well, it's not like it’s saying words, more like feeding ideas into my head. Sort of. " Lance answered.

"Well, if this thing is a weapon, why don't we just like -I don't know, give it to them? Maybe they'll just leave us alone. Sorry lion, nothing personal." Hunk apologized.

Everybody just looked at Hunk, (Cori especially) like he was an idiot. Chances were, even if the Galra promised to leave Earth alone once they had the blue lion, they would immediately turn around and vaporize the planet because it dared to be outside the Galra empire.

"You don't understand. These monsters spread like a plague throughout the universe. There's no bargaining with them. They won't stop until everything is dead." Shiro said, pretty much echoing Cori's thoughts.

"Oh. Never mind then," Hunk squeaked.

More ship rumbles drew Cori's attention back outwards, where she realized the blue lion was leaving Earth's atmosphere. She gaped at the shrinking land below, she’d just gotten there!

A moment later, a Galra battle cruiser dominated her vision, and she was praying that she’d remembered to put that extra coverup in her satchel. She didn’t want to be caught checking on it.

Everybody gasped, especially Pidge, who gazed at the enemy ship with sparkling eyes.

"Uh - holy crow Is that really An alien ship?" Hunk asked nervously.

"No, it's clearly a pigeon," Cori said dryly. "No, of course, it's an alien ship, Hunk, our luck is just that bad."

Shiro muttered something she couldn't make out, before she could take a moment to think, the cruiser started open fire on the blue lion.

“We’ve gotta get out of here!” Pidge called in a panic.

“Hang on!” Lance commanded. Cori clutched the back of his seat tighter, feeling mildly queasy as Lance dodged laser after laser. “I think I know what to do.”

“Then do it, genius! You're making me feel like Hunk!” Cori snapped.

Lance switched down the controls, and the blue lion let out a giant mouth beam. It wreaked havoc on the surface of the ship, causing multiple combustions.

“Note to self,” Cori muttered. “I’ve gotta get me one of these.”

Lance pushed the controls forward, this time using the blue lion’s claws to rake across the Galra cruiser.

“Nice job, Lance.” Shiro praised.

“I think it’s time to get these guys away from our planet.”

~~~

A few seconds later, the blue lion was passing Kerberos, the Galra cruiser still following behind at hyperspeed.

“Where are we?” Keith asked seriously. Cori looked out the ship’s dash, nodding towards Kerberos.

“The edge of the system. There’s Kerberos.”

“It takes months for our ships to get out this far! We got out here in five seconds.” Pidge said, looking out of the lion’s visor with awe.

Cori would have made a snarky comment, but she got distracted as she once again noticed a white feline out of the corner of her eye, she felt an incredibly powerful tug, something that seemed tethered to her very being.

Slowly, a vortex bled into being, and a quiznacking wormhole opened up right in front of the blue lion.

Trust the lion. The voice said in her head again.

“What is that?!” Hunk asked.

“This may seem crazy, but I think the lion wants us to go through there.” Lance answered, staring ahead.

“Well then, go through,” Cori said automatically.

“Where… does it go?” Pidge hesitated.

“I… I dunno.” Lance answered. “Shiro? You’re the senior officer here. What should we do?”

“Whatever’s happening, the lion knows more than we do. I say we trust it. But we’re a team now. We should decide together.”

Cori just shrugged, deciding to just do whatever the Lion itself did. The others nodded, and Cori rested her hand on the back of Lance’s chair.

“Alright.” Lance sighed. “Guess we’re all ditching class tomorrow.”

“Or for the next however long,” Cori muttered. The blue lion dove through the portal, and she severely hoped the Galra cruiser didn’t make it through as well.