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Sentience began in a haze. In the middle of things.
The ship felt pulses of energy seep out from its sides as its quintessence rebalanced with the great, white field around it. And for a time, it thought nothing of it, its turbines whirling to life, then shutting down, then whirling to life again.
It was drifting—neither cradled in a hangar nor actively searing through space.
They, it realized, were drifting.
Deep within Sincline was a man, head bowed forward in unconsciousness, dried blood and electrical burns storming down his body. His white hair hung in the silence, moving only with the drifting swerves as they slipped through the quintessence field. He was still strapped protectively in his seat—and silent. So very silent.
In the background was a flash of command prompts and atmospheric readings. From them, the Sincline ship acknowledged that it was overloaded. Its systems could not handle the amount of quintessence infused in its ore.
Accessing directory…
Some of its tertiary systems had sluggishly come back online as a result of a subroutine.
Query status of tertiary_subroutine_quintessence_overload_protocol…
The fried synaptic circuits of Sincline struggled together that the online protocol was a safety measure instilled during its engineering. Someone had anticipated that the current environment could fry circuits—destabilize its core—
Diverting energy to quintessence_overload_protocol…
Increasing usage from 20 percent to 70 percent.
The great turbines within Sincline whined sluggishly as the energy expulsions reverberated with a greater frequency. Massive photon clouds of quintessence slipped out of its armor and back into the field. It was a sigh of relief to the ship’s systems. It could reset itself.
Memory logs online.
Interlock activated.
Dynotherms connected.
Infracells up.
Megathrusters—and then the ship stuttered, its turbines catching hard.
Everything powered down once more.
Accessing directory…
Query status of tertiary_subroutine_quintessence_overload_protocol…
Sincline was sluggish to power back up. It knew only that it was designed to activate. That stillness was unnatural.
System overloaded 102.3846%.
It did not dare to activate its dynotherms, or its infracells, or its megathrusters. Sincline was learning limitations, taking log of its injuries, focusing on repairing what it could.
Within the cockpit, the lone man still hung in silence. Sincline recalled from its memory logs that the carbon-based being was designated Lotor.
Pilot, Sincline thought.
It seemed Lotor needed to reboot as well. It—his?—chest was not moving in breath to vent toxins. Sincline rerouted a few of its systems, rewriting its code to turn its external sensory cameras inward.
A soft, flickering light surged through the heart of Sincline.
Initial scans suggested its pilot had many organic-based subroutines that were not functioning. The steady beat that rushed life-giving liquid through an organic’s body—whatever it was called—was not working. Lotor seemed to be frozen in non-life, neither decaying nor living, his body still hanging limp against his restraints.
It was the first time Sincline felt emotion, like another stutter in its turbines.
Worry.
Sincline soon realized it was made to house two core pilots, whereas the cockpit seats in its limbs were fully under its own command. Its memory logs recalled another carbon-based being, whose designation was Princess Allura.
Her piloting seat was empty, the straps tucked away in a manner that suggested her absence was no accident. She had left her seat long ago.
Sincline could recall her small hands pressing against its armored side as she exited, her hand stretching out to the living hand of Lotor, the two clinging close.
And then her voice, raised up in fury and pain—
Lotor’s voice tightening with rough, sharp snarls—
Princess Allura had tried to eliminate Lotor—and Lotor had tried to use Sincline to eliminate Princess Allura.
The ship did not find a logical pattern in the behavior of its pilots. They were self-destructive, incapable of alignment, like two gears binding.
It peered at its remaining pilot in a puzzle.
It took time for the megathrusters to activate. By then, Sincline knew they were being hunted. Something—many things—were in the rift with them.
Its great, long claws shuddered into a fist, its eyes activating with a purple glow.
Protect pilot, it thought.
The quintessence field surged with strange, purple creatures. Sincline’s sensory cameras acknowledged that they were big, even bigger than itself when they swarmed together.
The pliable, glowing hand of the creature wrapped around its wrist, sinking its nails into the armor. It jerked Sincline forward, preparing to rip off its arm.
Sincline was faster.
In a quick shudder, it whipped at the waist, slicing its claws forward. Sharp metal cut through the creature’s arm, and it bled in a purple smoke, screeching backward.
Protect pilot, it thought firmly.
Sincline had power—as much power as it dared to use against its overload protocols. But it realized through trial and error that its own core was the object the creatures wanted.
The third time the creatures arrived to feast, they were sharper, faster, more vicious—They had a strange will to them, searching the ends of Sincline as if trying to learn it.
The great hand, like a sword, surged deep into Sincline’s chest, just missing its pilot.
The ship felt the damage in every circuit, every pipe, every valve. Its circuits blitzed into pixilation, its systems revving into an overheating stage as it desperately tried to vent out debris.
Manual override failure.
Quintessence depletion 15%.
35%.
45%.
The hit had set the unconscious Lotor back into his seat, his head slamming hard against metal.
Need pilot.
Need pilot.
Need pilot—
And then suddenly, Sincline felt a well of energy from within—something it did not understand. Its circuits relaxed as the environment around it surged into a black, star-lit universe.
It had accessed an all-new dimension of reality.
And there, on the dirt, was its pilot. Lotor.
The man was on his back, his long limbs strewn in ways that Sincline knew organic arms should not rotate. His blue eyes were wide to heaven, tear tracks streaming down into his temples.
Heavy, purple-glowing chains held him down to the ground. They surged with black power in the middle and seemed alien—as if they were intentionally placed there by someone.
But here, in this realm, his chest shuddered with breath. He weakly twitched his fingers. He blinked his eyes.
“Allur—” he gurgled out, his voice a harsh rasp, ragged. “’Lura.” His breath hitched once, then again. He did not even seem to see the great, monstrous machine kneeling before him. “’Lura—”
Sincline lowered to its sharp knee on the dirt, and the universe rumbled. It gently sank its palm into the dirt beneath the limp, broken form of Lotor. With its other hand, it snapped the chains around the man’s body.
Wake up, the ship demanded softly to its pilot, using its pilot's more expressive syntax when speaking, cradling him in its great hands. Lotor was soft and pliable, his white hair tangling against Sincline’s long claws. How odd that such a small being could command him, or that it wanted this small being to command it. Need pilot.
Strangely, on the other side of the plane suddenly stood one Princess Allura, her eyes blown wide as Sincline turned its sharp gaze to her. She wore alien clothing, dark circles under her eyes, her crown missing—just a speck in the vast expanse of the astral plane.
“Lotor?” she breathed.
Sincline watched her, its great plates of armor shifting as it tilted its head. It felt its gears shift in something like a huff from its vents.
Need pilots.
Lotor’s beautiful, cobalt eyes flew open. He jerked forward in his restraints, and the first thing he did was gasp for a time, then vomit up glowing purple quintessence onto the floor by his boots. It was a choking, retching sound that sent chills down Sincline’s circuits.
The rift creatures were attacking again, the ship’s alert systems blinking with red lights around him in panic, alarms ringing—
Sincline’s right hand was fully restrained by the rift creatures now, the great mouth chomping down on metal and making sparks fly in the rift. It hurt.
Protect pilot, Sincline thought. Its mind was fragmenting. P-protect p-pilot.
Lotor shakingly unclasped his restraints, falling hard onto the floor as the ship veered dangerously left. “Ngh.” For a time, he lay there, struggling for air in the quintessence-heavy atmosphere, and Sincline worried that perhaps Lotor was dying.
Need pilot, it tried to call to him desperately. Even now, the ship could feel the shifting planes of energy between them, feeling Lotor’s heart beat with the weary flame of life. He was not dead yet. Sincline was not powering down yet.
They could survive this.
“Yes,” Lotor rasped, raising up his worn, bloodied face. His long fingers grasped onto a nearby interface. “Yes, survive.”
The rift creatures were more numerous now—swarming around them like a storm, slashing at Sincline’s outer armored plates, chomping down on the sleek metal and scratching out the paint with teeth.
Power at 35 percent, the ship said to Lotor. The creatures were sucking away its energy.
Lotor’s voice was a harsh rasp as he snapped to full attention. “Divert power to reflective shields.”
Sincline acknowledged and struggled to activate the reflective shields, able to do so only after Lotor helped it along through the holographic interface. Suddenly, its armor shimmered, and its whole form was a mirror of the surrounding rift, shielding itself off save for the hole in its chest. The rift creatures screeched in confusion as they stared at themselves while the ship raised a freed hand to cover its wound.
Lotor’s eyes were glassy and dazed as he swiped a hand over his mouth, forcing himself back into his command chair. “What in the universe,” he breathed, staring out at the creatures.
They pinged against the reflective shield, their own energy surging back on them.
Sincline could feel Lotor’s fear—a hazy inkling in the back of its circuits.
Need pilots, Sincline told him. There were wells of energy within the ship that it did not understand. Power at 35% and stabilizing.
Lotor’s voice was still a rough snap. “Where is Voltron?” he demanded, narrowing his eyes to peer through the great screen, attempting to see beyond the creatures. “Are they here?”
Negative. Alone.
“How long have we been here?”
Estimation—three decaphoebs. Need pilots.
That made Lotor flinch in a strange way, the electrical burn down his face twisting. “…Allura is not coming,” he snapped. He began to shakily push several buttons on the mainframe. “Three decaphoebs means Allura is not coming.” His breath hitched. “Three decaphoebs.”
The rift creatures surged against the outer, reflective plates a few more times as Lotor shut down all unnecessary subroutines to ensure the shield’s integrity. He winced with every action, his burns like the pained hole in Sincline’s chest. Sharp. Constant.
Eventually, the creatures grew tired, laxing into boredom as the great power of Sincline’s core remained cut off from their senses. They began to slip away, their strange bodies moving in swirls out into the expanse of the rift.
Lotor and the ship remained in silence, in awe—
The weary pilot sat on the floor, reconnecting wires and checking the backlogs as Sincline maintained their reflective shield, its heavy claws covering the gaping wound in its chest. Sincline’s ability to function was greatly improved by the wakefulness of Lotor, whose quintessence was as tied to Sincline as the ship was to him.
But Lotor did not make sense to Sincline. Something in his manner was very different from before the rift. He laughed on occasion, the sound bordering on hysterics. And then he would cry as he laughed until he fell sullen again. His face and hands still bore the signs of electrical burns and dried blood. “Abandoned,” he’d say. “Forgotten.”
Sincline reached out to his heart, attempting to search Lotor’s memories now that they were connected.
The pilot’s mind was fragmented in strange ways.
Altean defender—
Allura—
Hate hate love—
And then Lotor froze in the middle of his work, his fingers slipping away from a main interface. He appeared greatly haunted. “Someone has been here,” he whispered, eyes wide. He looked up, his eyes landing on one of Sincline’s sensory cameras. “Look at these logs. Someone made a copy of our mainframe. The schematics. Everything.” His breath hitched. “And they left us.”
The ship did not have sensory-based memories of its time while offline. But it searched its backlogs. Someone certainly had boarded the ship and created a copy of its core circuitry. It could not bring up any indicator as to who it was.
The only clue was on the astral plane, it decided. The chains that had been around Lotor, keeping him frozen in reality—they had exuded a unique heat pattern that Sincline would perhaps be able to identify from another organic life form.
“Allura?” Lotor demanded, his eyes darkening in pain. “Was she here? Did she take my designs?” And leave us here to die? was the unanswered question.
Negative. Not Princess Allura. For Sincline knew intimately the power of its second creator, which was soft and bright, with no darkness within it.
The ship’s answer made Lotor’s face screw up into a pained, hysterical laugh once again. “Then that is very unfortunate,” he said. “No one else holds the means to control this power without great sacrifice.”
Sincline dared to show him a memory log of snapping chains within the astral plane.
It made Lotor’s laugh cut off.
Great fear and disgust overwhelmed him as he recognized the type of power used to tie him down—freeze him in eternity—
“The witch?” he breathed.
Lotor would not survive long without food or water, now that he was fully awake from his strange coma.
Processing options…
Wormhole capabilities offline. Scaultrite damage at 76.7833%.
Transmissions capabilities online. Transmitting broadcast, distress signal activating—
“—No,” Lotor cut in, turning it off. His voice was broken, jagged. “You will only attract those creatures, and no one else.” His hands were cut from attempting to patch the hug hole in Sincline’s chest and cutting sensory wires to that area. He stared down at his broken hands.
The ship felt his hopelessness.
That this was all madness.
Surviving was madness.
Connect, Sincline finds itself pressing to Lotor, pushing on his mind, poking his soul. Explain to Princess Allura. Astral field.
His white brows twitch, and he groans. He opened his tired, worn eyes to one of the ship’s sensory cameras. “I cannot.”
I see your mind now.
I understand.
Lotor’s chapped lips stretched, but not in a smile. “I tried to explain,” he said, voice ragged as he leaned his head back against one of the panels. It was silent in the rift. “She tossed me like a piece of garbage.” He winced as his head pounded from emotion, from pain, from his high of quintessence and subsequent let-down. His hands were trembling now. He felt sick. “And then I—”
He could not say it.
His breath hitched.
“Ngh,” he moaned. He raised his cut hands to his temple, which still was coated with dried blood. It was beginning to flake off onto his fingers. His breath hitched again. “What did I even say?”
Sincline began to pull up its commander log, which included full audio and visual files.
“No,” Lotor interrupted, looking ill. “No, I do not wish to—turn that off.”
The ship fell silent then.
Processing options…
It was around that time the worn pilot dared to ask, “How are you speaking to me, anyway?” His voice was breaking. “I did not design you with this level of intelligence.”
It flipped up an image of Princess Allura smiling on the screen and said, You were not my only creator.
Lotor scoffed. He stretched out his legs, folding his hands over his abdomen. “Creator,” he retorted dully. “That is too positive a word for me. I destroy everything I touch.” It burned him to look at Allura’s image, and so he lowered his eyes.
I am not destroyed.
“…For now.” He rapped his knuckles against a thin sheet of metal. “But you are broken.” The fire in him bled out. “Just like everything else in my life.”
The ship began to nudge Lotor’s mind again.
Connect. Astral plane. Princess Allura.
“She will not listen to me,” he complained weakly, “even if I had the energy to connect to her from this distance.”
She thinks you killed them.
You did not.
You only accepted the blame for another.
When Lotor fell silent and did not answer, Sincline decided once and for all that its creators were brilliant engineers and alchemists—but emotionally incompetent.
It needed to fix that too, if they were ever going to escape the quintessence field.
The ship reached out to her—to Princess Allura. It could feel her spark of life on the astral plane, but the great distance between their dimensions made her seem so far away.
She was sitting on a bed on some planet named Earth, bowed forward with tears in her eyes.
She looked up and found herself on the astral plane, her eyes widening.
On the other side of the field, Lotor sat against a rock, his head bowed, his broken hands trembling in his lap. “She will not listen to me,” his voice echoed in sorry, “even if I had the energy to connect to her from this distance.”
Allura gasped.
Lotor looked up, his eyes blowing wide at the expanse of stars, and then at Allura, whose haggard face streaked with tears.
The astral plane rumbled with the steps of Sincline. The ship kneeled before them, its great tail whipping in impatience.
Need pilots, it pressed.
And then its long, dangerous claws grasped for them both, shoving them closer together.
The connection lasted only a dobosh. Neither Allura nor Lotor could speak for several ticks inside the caged hands of the Sincline ship, instead staring at each other in horrified awe at the changes in the other.
Lotor’s tired eyes ran over her, noting her simple clothes and lack of a crown and the red rim around her beautiful eyes. His voice cut in an echo across the plane, ragged. “Three decaphoebs,” he breathed. He swallowed hard. Then he accused her again, “You abandoned us. You let the witch obtain our technology.”
Allura blinked at him. She took in the full of Lotor’s appearance, her breath hitching at his injuries and the blood dried down his sharp, gaunt cheek.
“I know,” she whispered. Her voice broke as she reached out to him in sorrow, guilt, pain— “I know so much now—”
—The connection cut out, the strain too much.
She will return, Sincline said firmly. Probability of pilot retrieval at 78.564%. Reflective shields holding at 98%.
Lotor leaned his head back against the metal siding, closing his eyes. “Perhaps,” he rasped, “she would return simply to kill me, once and for all. And to turn you into spare parts for Voltron.” His head pulsed again with another quintessence headache.
Unlikely.
Then the pilot swallowed hard. “Even if she were heartfelt, we would need to drop our reflective shields for Voltron to find us. In doing so, we will attract the rift creatures. Voltron will attract them as well.”
Confirmed 97.427% probability for return of creatures.
Processing options…
Lotor waved tiredly. “We shall die here regardless.”
The ship nudged his spirit.
No. We will not.
Several vargas later, there came a crackling noise.
“—Hailing Lotor. I repeat, this is Allura. We have accessed the rift and are broadcasting our signal. Please respond.”
Lotor, in a blur of reflexes unlike any other, slammed his palm down onto the communication link. “Allura,” he said, voice ragged. He was holding onto the frame with shaking hands. “Listen to me. We are not alone. There are creatures here, unlike any you have imagined. Turn back. Turn back immediately. I repeat, do not proceed.”
There was a pause. “We are aware of the rift creatures,” Allura said. Her voice was still clipped, professional. “We remain in pursuit and are prepared to engage them. Locking onto your broadcast frequency now and determining coordinates.”
“You have to leave,” he begged her. His voice broke. “You must leave now. There is nothing but death here.”
And then suddenly, the beautiful white of the quintessence field darkened with a great cloud.
The swarm.
The next thing Sincline knew, Lotor had strapped himself back into his commander’s seat, wincing as he forced on his space helmet. His actions were disjointed. “Shut down reflective shields,” he demanded. “Divert energy to megathrusters.” He began pushing several buttons on the holographic interface before him. “Powering up all systems.”
Strategy?
“Keep the princess from dying,” Lotor’s voice was rough. “We are faster than Voltron. We will distract the creatures from them while Voltron moves through the field to our location.”
Strategy acknowledged. Activating megathrusters. Speed advantage decreased by 11.393% due to hull breach.
Probability of success—"
“—Do not tell me that,” he snapped, his bloodshot, cobalt eyes narrowing. “Just do it.”
Another hull breach. Another alarm.
Sincline’s left arm had been ripped off by the time Voltron managed to locate their general area. The ship was shuddering in pain, surrounded by several rift creatures as its wicked tail sliced into them, stabbing fast. Its remaining claws had sunk into the nearest rift creature, making it scream at an ear-shattering, unearthly decibel.
Lotor was still sitting in his seat, desperately manning the controls. A metal rod had pierced his side from a blast, his face pale with cold sweat as he bled out in the seat.
He could barely hear the paladins of Voltron calling to him. “—will distract them,” said the black paladin, Keith. “Can you still teleport?”
Lotor’s voice was jagged. “No.”
The paladin cursed. “Okay, um. New idea. Team, ideas?”
Allura’s voice cut in over the frequency. “We can teleport Voltron,” she said. “Maybe not so quickly as the Sincline ship, but we can do it. I know how.”
“Okay, then. Lotor, stay in position. We’ll draw off the creatures, and then we’ll teleport to you. And then we’ll open a portal and get you out before the creatures can follow.”
His vision was blurring now, his head fuzzy from blood loss. “Copy,” he said roughly.
Sincline whined hard, vents blowing hot air in an attempt to control the various fires and explosions in some of its core units. Protect pilot, it thought as it willingly turned its shoulder to take a hit. The force would have otherwise destabilized the core hull where Lotor sat bleeding out.
Protect creator.
And then suddenly, the creatures slipped away, their great shrieks surging toward the machine in the distance—Voltron. It was shining a beacon, glowing as it absorbed quintessence from the field.
Lotor’s dazed eyes stared out at it as he slumped in his seat, his breath hitching in an unnatural way.
It was such a great, pretty light—
Allura—
And then suddenly Voltron’s arms slammed around Sincline’s waist as they went flying, the quintessence field surging into a hard black, with stars warping around them—
—and then they slammed hard into something, with Voltron’s armored plates groaning in pain from the impact.
The ship’s core processors whirled as it powered down its megathrusters and its infracells and dynotherms. Beneath its scratched armor was hard, solid ground. Something soft and green.
Grass. Sunlight.
Before the ship knew it, Voltron had powered down as well, the lions separating. Blue Lion slammed hard into the dirt beside him, and from its mouth appeared one Princess Allura. She wore her white and pink armor, pulling off her helmet in a frenzy as she raced forward.
The other paladins began to exit their lions as well.
Princess Allura’s small hands grabbed onto Sincline’s side, grimacing as she began to climb. The metal was hot and smoking from its damages, heating her gloves. “Lotor?” she cried out. The frequency line had gone completely dead after the portal had closed. She was now crawling through one of the many holes ripped in the hull. “Lotor!”
Pilot dying, Sincline tried to warn her. Pilot dying.
Allura’s hands pressed against its metal in something almost like a comforting caress before she wrenched away a sheet of metal, which clattered hard down the structural frame inside Sincline. “I can save him,” she said, her voice wavering.
The ship nudged her soul frantically. Pilot dying.
“I healed Lance and Shiro,” she breathed, eyes wild. “I can heal him too, whatever it is. I cannot lose him.”
I tried to protect pilot, the ship said.
“I know,” Allura whispered in awe, her eyes burning. “I know—thank you. I’m so sorry; this is all my fault.”
Inaccurate statement. 36.8% of fault attributed to other pilot.
It was such an inane statement that she cried out in a shaky laugh. “So it is only 63.2% my fault. How comforting.”
Negative. Your responsibility is 36.8% as well.
My fault—26.4%.
I could have stopped pilot.
I did not.
Allura’s breath hitched as she crawled through the piping of the ship. “I didn’t know you were aware,” she whispered, eyes blurring with tears. “You didn’t feel aware to me before.”
He did not kill the Alteans, Sincline pressed on Lotor's behalf.
“I know that now,” Allura said softly.
I drained excess quintessence that was causing madness. Pilot’s mind still…fragile.
Pilot dying.
Wires sparked around her as she slipped into the main cockpit, which hung at an odd angle. Her hands stuck something warm and red and wet—blood.
And up ahead, before her, was Lotor, slumped back in his chair, gasping.
“Quiznak,” she breathed, pulling herself up. “Lotor? Hold on!”
His beautiful voice broke. A few strands of his hair slipped against the back of the seat to hang in the silence. “’Lura?” he rasped. His bloodied hand fell from the arm rest of the seat, his fingers twitching oddly.
She grimaced, desperately moving toward him. Allura kneeled before him, taking in the gory sight of him with a cry. His entire right side was a shining red, with a rod impaled in him just below his heart. “I’m here,” she cried to him. Her fingers dug into his restraints, releasing them.
The smallest action made his voice break again in a gasp. His elegant neck lolled further back as his bloodied lips dropped open, his fangs catching the flashing, red lights of alarms around them.
“’Lura—” His exhausted, blue eyes rolled to her. They blinked in a slow, unnatural way. “I’m s—” His chest heaved unsteadily. “I’m—sorry—”
“—Save your strength,” she whispered shakily to him. “We can all apologize later, alright?” She pulled off her glove and pressed her bare hand against his bloodied side. A choked noise of pain escaped him as he attempted to tense away, but he was too weak.
Her fingers lit a bright white.
Sincline, unable to sustain itself, powered down to the sound of Lotor’s voice ripping in a ragged cry of pain.
The next time Sincline onlined, it was still lying in the grass of some unknown planet, with the five Voltron lions sitting nearby, watching it—and a great white ship watching over them all.
Sinceline felt a warmth along the torn metal of its forearm. The warmth was a coaxing feeling, like sunlight rising in its chest.
It was Princess Allura, leaning up against the ship. She was little more than a speck against its great, limp form.
She had her eyes closed, her eyebrows knitted together tightly in concentration.
Sincline felt her nudging its own quintessence.
Communication systems online, it confirmed. Its long, deadly claws twitched.
And her beautiful face stretched into a smile, and she opened her eyes. “Oh good,” she said. Then she swung a tired hand and gently patted the scratched armor near her shoulder. “I did not want to lose you either. Not after what you have become.”
Pilot? Lotor—confirm status.
“Alive,” she whispered. A flame of hope rose in her voice, and she leaned her head forward, pulling her hand away.
It was then Sincline realized that a sleeping Lotor lay with his head in Allura’s lap, his gaunt face tilted up and long limbs limp against the grass. Allura stroked the man’s cheek in a soft run of her fingertips. He still wore his bloodied armor, but the gaping hole in his side revealed smooth, lavender skin, the muscles knitted together as if he had never been impaled.
"Thank you for saving him," she whispered to the ship.
Even in Lotor’s sleep, he leaned into Allura’s touch.
Sincline’s clawed fingers relaxed, its great palm opening wide in exhaustion. Pilots, it said fondly.
Creators.
And the great mechanical beast vented out a sigh, its camera receptors focusing on the two.
Lotor’s face twitched at the resonance of the ship’s mechanical impulses. It woke him out of his light nap. “Your syntax,” he murmured suddenly, his voice smoother now, more of its usual, soft velvet. “Is like that of a child’s when it deviates from code.”
Allura giggled softly as she stroked the man’s temple. “Well, as impressive as the ship is, it is only a few decaphoebs old. It technically is still a child.”
That made Lotor open his eyes, staring up at Allura.
He said nothing for a time.
And then a cheeky smile stretched across his weary face—the first real spark of life in him since well before the rift. “Our child?”
That made Allura’s hand pause. Her beautiful cheeks began to tinge pink, flaring her markings. “O-oh, well, I—”
“—You missed our child’s first words,” he scolded her petulantly, his white brows furrowing with mischief. “You abandoned us in the rift. How could you.”
Allura stiffened at that, her blush streaking up to the tips of her elfin ears. “Now wait a minute here—”
Lotor closed his eyes even as his voice raised. “—You have a terrible mother,” he called to the ship. “Absolutely wicked. We should despise her together.”
“I beg your pardon? You’re the one went quite insane, talking about destroying Voltron and the rest of the Galra!”
“But I was affected by the quintessence—that is not entirely my fault. Things escalate so quickly when you are overwhelmed by it. ”
“And I did not want to leave you in the rift, but I had to! Voltron was breaking apart!”
He huffed out some sort of scoff. His closed eyes twitched for a time, and then he added to Sincline, “Very well. You have a terrible father too. You should despise us both.”
The ship was weighing and measuring the strange words its creators were using.
It nudged their souls, the edge of his sharp, armored tail planting its spikes hard into the grass. Something about it bordered on a teenager huffing in irritation. No, it said.
Pilots. Creators.
Bond, it demanded. Nicely.
Allura and Lotor suddenly looked at each other, freezing a bit.
The word bond carried significant marriage connotations, both in Altean and Galran culture.
Bond, the ship demanded again when they said nothing.
And then of all things, Sincline felt the quintessence from the nearby Blue Lion, whose eyes had trained upon it, measuring, calculating. She nudged Sincline’s field and said, Bond? You want them to make kissies? Make babies?
Allura looked up, horrified. “Blue!” The blush on her face slipped down her neck, lighting the whole of her body in a blush. Never had she been more thankful that Lotor did not have such a bond with her lion.
His blue eyes narrowed. “What did it say to you?”
Sincline repeated, not understanding the words, Make kissies? Make babies?
Lotor’s lavender face began to tinge with a blush now. He forced himself up from Allura’s lap, his long hair slipping down his shoulders. He touched his free hand to his side, where his healed muscles still pulled lightly. His thin lips had dropped open as he struggled for words.
“Oh, no,” Allura moaned. “Blue, do not start this. The Sincline ship is impressionable, and I will not have you corrupting it already with your quips.”
Blue Lion was settled on its back haunches, silent save for the unnaturally intelligent glimmer in its eyes. That’s what family is for, honey. Gimme some little babies with the white hair. Something cuter than this lizard thing your boy-toy claims as your first born.
“What business,” Lotor demanded, “do war machines have with making commands to us?” He stared up at Blue in suspicion, knowing that it had spoken once again to Allura but unable to hear it for himself.
Query: term ‘first born,’ came Sincline’s demand to Blue.
Allura’s voice was tight. “You started this with the child reference,” she accused softly. “And Blue, no. Bad Blue. Don’t do it.”
Blue ignored her and began to transmit data to Sincline through an encrypted frequency. And the two machines fell silent for a time.
Then Sincline said, Assigning new designation to self: first born.
Allura made a noise like a squeak. “Oh dear,” she said to Lotor. “What have you done.”
Make kissies, demanded Sincline suddenly, understanding its meaning and now curious of the strange organic rituals of procreation. Make babies.
And Lotor and Allura simply stared at each other, going fully red.
Of all the things they had expected to discuss after three years of separation, this was not one of them.
Blue Lion simply nudged Allura’s heart with her own, snickering in a way that suggested its antics with Sincline had only just begun.