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Chapter Text

 "Lance, be safe." He turned to leave.

"Wh-where are you going?" The seal was warned away from following, but it was so hard to not follow the only person you had left in the world.

His uncle didn't stop, but his nephew already knew the answer. Lot was going to do what he'd been trying to do for months now. He was going to take the Galra down. It was no place for a child like Lance. 

1

Between the sudden disappearance of his family and the fact it was his birth anniversary, Lance felt it justified to let the panic make him a little teary eyed.

No one was around to notice anyway. His uncle had left him in the farthest familiar area he could before swimming in the opposite direction. It was just not safe to be in the middle of the ocean anymore.

I wasn't really crying, he rationalized later. Just tearing up a little, so no red eyes. By all means, his eyes were nearly pitch black. The salt water that leaked out of them faded into the rest of the ocean.

No, no one would be able to prove that Lance was crying. He was too old to cry anyway. He was officially ten now! Ten entire decapheebs old.

He approached a familiar cove, hoping to at least find his siblings. Maybe they and their parents were throwing a party with the rest of his family there. Uncle Lot was just really paranoid after all, everyone knew that. Maybe his and his neighbors' homes had been destroyed on purpose because it was just the best way to surprise Lance.

The selkie surfaced, hoping to see his sisters, and his mom, and his dad.

"Teme? Ami?" he called. "Ma? Pa?"

The cave was his. Somewhat of a summer tree house, though Lance didn't know what a tree house was at the time. Selkies usually liked staying in the same place for as long as possible, but Lance's family tuned into the human seasons and traveled as such.

With family all over the world, it was nice to visit them every once in a while. However, the territory this cavern was in was completely desolate of sentient life. It was the most alone Lance had been.

Lance entered the cave with the hope it was all some sort of elaborate prank. Maybe a joke everyone was playing on him and his Uncle Lot because everyone knew Lot was a little iffy in the head. Galra would really stage an all-out war on the ocean. Conquest? The sea was for everyone.

The high walls shimmered in the brackish water of the cove, like most of the salt had been sucked out of the ocean water to ornate them. Nobody was there.

Lance found himself on the rocky floor, half his coat off to better taste the air. He leaned over to stare into the calm water, watching his human face crinkle. More tears escaped his eyes, disturbing the reflection in the water. Human eyes do turn different colors when they leak.

It had been so peaceful in the ocean. Who would ever want to ruin that?

Galra, apparently. Lance had played with some Galra children once. The obvious game to play had been war at the time, but now just remembering made Lance feel sick in the stomach.

What a rotten anniversary. One more tear fell into the water.

"Why are you naked?" a voice suddenly startled Lance, making the poor selkie jump right out of his skin (a very literal statement) and into the sea. He splashed around, spluttering at the sight of his first human.

Although he could still swim well enough, his movements were jerky and felt weird compared to how he usually resided in the sea. Like he no longer belonged there. It wasn't a very nice feeling, and Lance would never understand how humans could swim in the beach without a coat of their own. The ocean was kicking him out with every jerky kick his feet made.

The human was the same height as a child, but taller than Lance, and with greater shoulders. He neared the coat, poking it curiously.

"Don't take it!" Lance yelped, splashing his way onto the hard ground. "Please!"

"I'm just looking," the boy pouted, but he sat back to stare as the selkie made his way to his skin.

Lance was only a little wary. The boy looked like what selkies hid under their coat. All humans did, he supposed, but the human pulled it off in a strange and exotic way. He belonged on land, after all. Under the sea, he's probably just look like a wet human.

"Why does it look like a seal?" the human asked, frowning at the empty coat.

Lance blinked. "I'm kind of a seal," he answered, sliding his legs into the tail comfortably. Except seals didn't have a hidden body below their skin. They were a bit temperamental too, but so would Lance be if he could only flop around on land instead of walk on legs.

He swished his tail as if to prove a point, slapping the human's hand when he poked him a little too hard.

"Oh," the human blinked. "You don't look like a seal to me."

"I have to put it on all the way," Lance explained, but he didn't move to demonstrate—he wasn't going back in the water anyway. He didn't know where to go now that Uncle Lot was gone. He knew he wouldn't find anyone by himself, and right now, being alone in the sea was very dangerous for a young selkie like him.

"Why are you crying?" the human asked, frowning hard.

Lance sniffed, wrinkling his nose in discomfort. Selkies didn't sniff like this, but apparently they did when their coat was off. It was strange. The tears made him feel better, but the situation was not getting better at all, so it all confused Lance very much.

"I can't find my family," he answered, wiping his eyes with his wet arm. His face was completely soaked by the time he felt his eyes dry out, but the human didn't comment.

"Oh. I'm sorry. Don't you know where you live?"

Lance gave him a look, glancing at the water behind him meaningfully before casting his eyes back on the human.

"They're missing, I didn't lose them," he stated, slightly offended. "Some bad people stole everybody." His lip quivered at the thought, and the human gave him a very sympathetic look.

"Your mom and dad too?"

Lance nodded. "And my sisters and cousins and everybody," he added. "Except my Uncle Lot, but he's gone too."

"That sucks," the human said, and for a second, Lance felt a little better. "Does that mean your mom won't have dinner ready when you go back?"

Feeling more misunderstood than ever, the selkie nodded gingerly, frowning at the thought of going back to his destroyed home. He already knew what it looked like, he'd seen the mess that had been left behind.

Worst of all, he'd seen how the mess had been made. The memory of it made him burrow himself into his body, giving him a smaller appearance than the one he liked to give.

The human could very easily detect the melancholy, so he worked his brain to make the other boy feel better.

"Hey, here's an idea," the young human smiled widely. "Come eat at my house! My mom makes the best calzones, ever!" He paused, hesitantly glancing toward the ocean behind Lance, "You don't want to go back there, do you?"

Lance got the feeling that the boy did not actually believe he lived in the water. Humans didn't believe in selkies. Humans drowned in the water.

His first instinct was to decline. Why would he ever leave the ocean? There was always something fun to do, and selkies lived to swim. It was nice and wet and much more peaceful than the land.

At one point, Lance had thought he would become a traveler, switching between human lands and the ocean water. Now he just wanted to be safe, and the safest place he knew was in the water.

But, he thought, furrowing his brow, that's not true. His parents and his sisters had been kidnapped. Everyone he knew had been kidnapped probably. His uncle was out there, but he clearly didn't want Lance around.

"I'm Lance," he finally said, staring into the human's eyes with determination. He was young and alone, he couldn't stay in open water, especially not with the Galra running amok.

It was so scary…

For now, land was the safest place Lance could be.

It took the human a second to speak again, mesmerized by the selkie's eyes. He could almost, for a second, believe the other didn't belong on land with the rest of the humans. A second later, the helpful child grinned delightedly, standing up and offering his hand to the selkie.

"Hunk," he said. "And you're still naked…"

Lance stepped out of his coat and firmly place his feet on the ground (truly, he was naked). He quickly knelt to grab the seal skin, biting his bottom lip when the ocean water caught his eye. He usually didn't let go of his skin, and now he was giving it to a human?

He'd heard the legends. He knew of horrible stories in which selkies were banned from the ocean for being stupid enough to let a human touch their skin. Yet here he was, willing to give up his home to a human.

Maybe he could just… Lance stared at the ocean, hesitant. Just...go back.

Oh no, he couldn't go back. Not now. He had already decided.

But I will come back, he thought furiously, and very bravely. He swallowed a lump in his throat and held on tighter to his coat.

"Hunk," he said in a vague tone.

"Yeah?"

"Can you hide this from me?" Lance turned to offer the human his coat, pushing it into Hunk's arms.

"I thought you said I couldn't take it," Hunk wondered, but he still grabbed it eagerly, inspecting it with a curious eye. He admired the wet coat, grabbing it at the edges to better stretch it out.

"Well, you can't keep it forever," Lance said a bit hotly, "but- but I need you to hide it from me. For a while."

Hunk looked like he wanted to ask why that was, but Lance interrupted whatever question he would have asked with his own. "What's a calzone?"

It had an immediate effect. The boy began explaining food to Lance with stars in his eyes.

For the next seven years, Lance would come to learn more about Hunk's passion for food, but at the moment, all Lance could hear was his own thundering heart.

It sped up a little more with every step he took away from the tides. Over the years, it would learn to calm down enough to let him enjoy his stay with the Garrett family.

But his gaze would always lead him to the sea.

2

"The Garrison?" Hunk flung his legs off Lance's bed, almost dropping the plate of food on his lap. Crumbs fell to the floor and onto the covers.

"Aww, come on Hunk," Lance complained, trying his best at crumb damage control. "I sleep here, dude."

"Whoops. But, seriously? You want to work in a submarine? But you hate the ocean! You don't even like going to the beach, which is weird because you once told me that you-"

"-lived in the sea. I know. Why do you still remember that, I told you like, what? Six years ago?"

"That was the day I met a weird kid who didn't know what calzones were, of course I didn't forget! Oh, also, my family practically adopted you that day."

"They didn't really adopt me till a few months later-"

"Lance," Hunk interrupted, "you've been family since day one, buddy."

Lance fell into his desk chair, smiling softly. "Yeah. Thanks, by the way."

"Whatever, dude," Hunk played it off, leaning back into the bed quietly. It was a very well built bed. Hunk was tall and bulky, so furniture tended to strain under him.

On the other hand, Lance, though tall, was thin and better built for a sashay than a lifting session. He thought it a bit weird, looking at his long fingers when his father and uncle had been almost as bulky as Hunk.

"So," Hunk continued their initial line of thought, "Mauna?"

The base had recently been rebuilt since the sea race had begun. It was the space race all over again, but under the sea and the hometown had been dragged into the action. Which nation would be first to discover the secrets of the ocean? Of course, Columbia was all over that quest.

Lance sighed. "I know, it's probably stupid. I can barely drive a car, much less a sub, right?"

"What! No! No way, that's not what I was gonna say. Besides, people go to the Garrison to learn how to operate subs too. But, you know, you have to go to boot camp too. And, and technically, the Garrison is on Columbian soil and water, so you'd be out of Oceania. Oh god, I've heard military food is terrible, what if the food is terrible?"

He said this all in one breath, and he would have continued had Lance not thrown both hands over Hunk's mouth.

"Buddy, calm down. I love you, man, but I never said you had to come with me. You don't need to worry about the food."

Hunk deflated. He mumbled something under Lance's palm—probably something akin to, "but you're so picky,"—but he didn't want to hear it. When the teen didn't move away, he licked his hand.

"Ah," Lance yelped, jumping away, "ew, Hunk!"

"Bleh, you taste like cocoa butter."

"Duh."

"Lance," Hunk said before the other could go on a tirade about personal hygiene and outer beauty, "do you seriously want to lead a submarine?"

Lance saw that Hunk was calculating. They both knew each other well. A little too well, in fact. Sometimes, Lance wondered how Hunk didn't realize Lance didn't belong where he was.

He looked at his hands, inspecting the polished nails for any flaws. He remembered a younger face, similar to his own (a face he hadn't seen in a long time). She happily played in the dirty ocean trenches and elegantly groomed herself when fun time was over. Two smaller figures interrupted the grooming to sprinkle sand around them.

Two other familiar faces smiled down on them, inviting him and his sisters for a nice family meal.

Surrounding the happy memory was water. So much water, all of it free and open. It tasted like salt; a welcome feeling surrounded them.

Lance found himself staring out his window, where the beach showed itself off in the distance. The ocean was not too far from the house, and a thin blue line of water remained barely visible in the horizon.

"Hunk, I have to get into the Garrison. Otherwise, I don't know what I'll do." Live out the rest of his life as a human? He felt restless at the thought. Eight years had been enough, thank you very much.

Lance was going back in the water, where the Galra had possibly infested the seven seas. He shuddered at the thought.

"Okay," Hunk nodded to himself. "Yeah, okay. Me too then."

Lance turned to face him with wide eyes. "Hunk, you don't have to-"

"Shut up, dude. You know I get motion sick anyway. I didn't really want to join the space garrison. Actually, I kinda thought you did..."

Lance didn't have the heart to tell him at that moment that the type of submarine he planned to man wasn't much better than a typical fighter jet.

"Thank you, man. You know, space was actually my second choice," he admitted thoughtfully.

"Why didn't you go for it?" Hunk asked, cocking his head. "You always looked pretty interested in it. Your eyes light up whenever someone mentions flying, did you know that?"

Lance scoffed. "Yeah, well flying is weird. I'm weirded out by it?"

"But you don't like swimming and you're joining the Navy…"

"I feel safer staying in this planet, how about that? Besides, your eyes light up when someone mentions a jet, why aren't you disappointed? You know we'll keep in touch even if we don't go to the same place, you could even go to a real university." Actually, Lance wasn't sure he would ever see his family again.

Hunk shrugged. "Subs are cool too. Also, closer to home. By the way, the space garrison is in a desert! No way am I comfortable stepping away from the beach. Dry land and me will not get along!"

Lance shivered at the thought of a desert, very in tune with Hunk's last statement. How did anyone survive without water? Why would anyone choose to live in a desert? By choice!

He kindly ignored that he and Hunk almost had. Maybe in a different life where Galra didn't exist in the ocean and Lance had his parents and his sisters intact, Lance could have flown a jet.

He groaned and looked away from the window (when had he started looking out again?) to finish his meal. "I guess you know what this means," he mentioned, eyebrows wiggling with mischief.

"What?"

Lance grinned, chewing his food carefully so as to not drop more crumbs on the floor (Hunk was going to clean that). "We're going to be roomies for another two years! We could even sneak out and get to know the rest of Columbian Hamoa! Aw, it's going to be sweet! Do you think the girls there are cute?"

He could tell Hunk was already beginning to regret his decision. He'd never been much of a rule breaker, which was why Lance was a great influence on him (he thought).

3

Sometimes, Hunk found Lance scavenging through his things.

Feeling furiously desperate one night before both teens were sent off to Mauna, Lance threw himself off his bed and quietly entered Hunk's room. His door was always open, so it was an easy task.

First he checked under the bed, where he knew Hunk liked to keep whatever he didn't want their cousins to mess around with. Lance ended up touching a lot of metallic things that made him feel unexpectedly proud and disappointed at the same time. Hunk was a genius, sweet. No skin under his bed (which would normally make one happy for entirely different reasons).

Mech stuff is weird, he concluded, putting away an incomplete radar.

He continued to scour through the bed, moving on to drawers and a box piled with miscellaneous objects.

"Lance?" Hunk's voice swam with weariness. The teen stilled in a crouched position, hands still touching Hunk's underwear. "What are you doing?"

"This is a dream," Lance tried, quickly turning around to wave his hands in Hunk's direction, hopefully in a manner that looked sort of dreamlike.

It didn't work. "Go to sleep, dude. Did you have a nightmare? You can sleep in here if you want, just stop making noise."

Lance straightened in offence. He was being totally quiet! The definition of sneaky! Besides, he knew better than anyone how to appreciate naps and one's beauty sleep, there was no need to tell him, of all people, to go to sleep!

Except, maybe there was this night. Lance glanced at Hunk's alarm clock and winced. It was way past any sane person's bed time. Closer to morning, really.

"Sorry," he apologized quietly, looking down at his shuffling feet. "I just…"

Hunk's sheets ruffled as he sat up, but Lance didn't look away from his bare toes. Toes were so weird. He wiggled them.

"Are you looking for something?" Hunk asked, sounding more awake.

Lance almost jumped at the opportunity to tell him what it was that he was missing.

He almost confessed that he'd been looking for something for almost six years, and that sometimes, when he looked out the window for too long, he couldn't help but wander into rooms in the house that he thought could have that something.

He almost begged Hunk to tell him, right then and there, where that something was, to tell him what he'd done to it.

But he had given Hunk his seal skin when the human had been too young to care about it. Lance himself had been young and naive enough to let go of his skin with only a few second thoughts.

Lance took a deep breath.

He smiled and said, "Nah, man. Just stressed about tomorrow."

Hunk complained that that was no reason to come bother him. Also, it was already tomorrow. He should just go to bed and make sure all his things are packed. "Just be quiet, I don't want mom to yell at us."

"Nighty night, Hunk," Lance gave him one last grin before exiting the room, pretending to find himself amusing. Once he reached his own bed, he sighed to himself and looked out the window.

He hadn't seen his coat since the day he's given it to Hunk and told him to hide it from him. It was the one thing keeping him on land (or rather, away from the water), and Lance knew his decision should not be regretted.

He liked land. It was very nice and inviting. Sure, it was a strange brown and green compared to the ocean, but that was superficial.

Land was dry too.

Lance groaned into his pillow, forcing his gaze away from the faraway ocean. After six years, he had no doubt Hunk had thrown away his coat.

Lance would never go back to the ocean as a selkie. He just had to get used to that.

Chapter Text

1

Almost six months passed at the Garrison before Lance and Hunk managed to touch an actual submarine.

The classes bored Lance half to death, but Hunk was enthusiastic enough about certain lessons for the both of them. The uniforms were also hard to pull off, but Lance found comfort (as much as he could) in the fact that the unflattering hue was worn by all students. It wasn't like he had to sneak out of the Garrison with the suit on.

There were no classes with windows, which the youth was grateful for. He pondered about the town just a little more than he would've had the sea constantly been on his mind. Instead of looking for his skin, he found himself planning a night out in the town's local clubs with Hunk. (When he stepped outside, he tried very hard to not smell the salt in the air. It was stronger here than back in Hamoa.)

Granted, he did still search through the room he shared with Hunk, but at least he was smart enough to pretend that he was sleepwalking now. Hunk had mentioned it one morning, but they both shrugged it off and Lance's occasional scavenging went mostly ignored.

"I guess moving made you a sleepwalker," Hunk suggested. "The same thing happened to my cousin when he went on a trip to Ecumene." Lance hummed agreeably, but refused to comment further.

Defense subs were relatively new and built for a small crew. A crew of five was the standard, but the smaller the crew, the smaller the ship.

For the best subs, three was the magic number, according to whatever genius thought three semi-adults was actually enough to man a sub that required constant care.

From day one, their professor made it clear that manning that submarine would mean less sleep and more cramming the sciences that kept it from sinking.

"At least you each get your own bed," he told them in the same disregarding tone he liked to use often. "Back in my day we could have had nearly 200 sleep deprived sailors working on the sub and never enough beds."

Most recruits scoffed or winced at the mention of past submarines.

"This small vessel is called the Kraken. Built for a crew of three, like most battle subs here. It's probably the worst ship for those of you who want to slack off," his eye strayed on Lance's person for a second, long enough to offend, "but perfect for anyone who is willing to put in the effort. Only the best of the best can pilot this one."

His students peered at the Kraken with intrigue.

"Why?" a short boy with glasses asked.

"Because battleships such as this one need someone with quick reflexes and a good understanding of the system. It's got complicated mechanics, but it also has the speed of a great white, so it needs a good team." This time, his eyes skimmed a guy with a mullet. He looked away and continued to inform the class about their options in subs.

Lance narrowed his eyes at the professor's back and then looked at the mullet man. How was this guy any better at steering than him? He had reflexes too! And Hunk was top notch when it came to engineering, it worked out perfectly!

But we would need another nerd to join the crew, he thought, already imagining the dumb look on his instructor's face when he realized that the real MVP was actually Lance. With Hunk on his side, he knew he couldn't lose at this sudden rivalry (yes, it was on) but it didn't hurt to be safe.

He swiveled to face the short boy with glasses, recognizing him vaguely. "You," he pointed rudely, "You look like a nerd!"

"What?" the student asked in a high voice, looking offended. He probably was, Lance would realize later. But Hunk was a nerd too—really, little guy should have been proud.

"I want to pilot the Kraken, and I need you to be part of my crew!"

While it did seem to catch the other's intrigue, Lance didn't get to hear his response. His instructor interrupted their conversation from across the small hall, a brow raised mockingly.

"A little early to start recruiting, don't you think Mr. McClain?"

Lance scowled at the use of his supposed surname. Years ago, when he'd first met Hunk's parents, he had been asked, "What's your last name?"

"Name? My name is Lance."

"No no. What's your surname?"

"My sire's name is Maklain," he'd responded, confused. Selkies didn't have surnames. They didn't even really need names, but it made it easier to communicate on land and with other species that could speak, so his parents had told him his name was Lance. His mistake...

Still, Lance insisted that humans use the Garrett surname, why were they so adamant on calling him by his father's name at the garrison? First of all, weird, nobody even pronounced it the same. Second of all, how dare anyone bring up the topic of his family, especially in that tone?

He almost complained to the instructor, but remained quiet at the thought of losing his chance to pilot the Kraken. He had to learn to steer it before he got to the part where he stole it, after all.

Maybe he should discuss with Hunk the fact he planned to steal a sub?

Nah, he'll understand.

"Sir," Lance said through gritted teeth.

"Feel free to get a crew, McClain," the instructor said dully, "but remember that we choose which submarine you're best suited for." He turned away and continued the class, obviously smug, the jerk.

With little to do but glare, Lance glared. He glared at his teacher and he glared at mullet man. He would show them. He would show them all!

Hunk approached him and patted him on the back, a little hard. "Stop pouting, Lance, it looks like you're having a dramatic moment."

Oh, he was, but he wasn't about to give his best bud any sort of ammo.

"Whatever," Lance rolled his eyes casually. "I'm definitely getting that sub."

They followed the class, glasses guy following close behind with an intrigued look. He hadn't said no.

2

Glasses guy was one Pidge Holt. He also liked to glare at the teacher's back furiously sometimes, so Lance had an easy time enjoying the little guy's company.

Not that it was very easy to hang out with him. If they ever managed to spot him during lunch, Lance dragged Hunk over to his table to pick at Pidge's food and make fun of his glasses (typical icebreakers). He once tried to show him how to flirt with girls, but Pidge never showed any interest and Lance was too interested himself (in the girl) to care.

When he tried to show him to flirt with guys and got the same result, Lance decided Pidge was a terrible student.

Generally, Pidge strayed clear of the cafeteria, but Lance took no personal offence. The kid had been doing that since he joined the Garrison.

"Wonder what his secret is," he'd commented once to Hunk, who didn't believe there was any secret at all (or else he would be all over that, Lance knew).

Hunk said there probably was no secret.

Frankly, Lance would have agreed with him before, but Pidge was a very suspicious and sneaky individual. He should know (he'd mastered that crap years ago).

Also he seemed oddly interested in the Kereberos Mission that had failed a while ago. That was also a clue.

But Lance respected his privacy (in the most minimal sense, of course. He still felt the need to be friends, he was just like that—and being friends with Pidge involved what some would call "stalking" and Lance would call "perseverance"). Hunk liked Pidge too, and sometimes the two nerds would enjoy some sort of technical talk that Lance liked to consider their private inside jokes.

Maybe he should study more.

…

What the hell, it wasn't like he would drown if he didn't know what a magneto dynamo prop was. ("It's magneto-hydrodynamic propulsar, Lance. But you're right, you won't drown." See! Inside nerd lingo that he needn't bother with!)

Lance accepted that he would be dumbfounded by Hunk and Pidge's occasional bouts of nerdism.

What he couldn't very well accept was the amount of buttons on the stupid submarine he'd been first assigned (Octopulous, what kind of name was that?).

"What is what!" he growled in frustration the fifth time the teacher told him to sink the sub. He definitely studied the piloting gears, he knew what (most) things were called and their general location, but everything was so clustered together that he couldn't even fake being cool about the fact he could read none of the words.

How does one turn on a submarine? The years he had spent studying human written language (English) seemed to go out the window, taking the minuscule letters on the dashboard with them.

He ended up failing that simulation, but there were many to come after that. He wasn't the only one to fail either (but he had been the only one that couldn't manage to sink his own ship until explicitly told how, so that stung).

Star student: Keith Kogane.

That was total bunk if you asked Lance, but no one did, so he just turned to Hunk to tell him himself.

"Who does he think he is?" he asked, pacing their room. "Allstar? MVP?"

"I think he just really likes subs," Hunk suggested, frowning at Lance's feet as if to say, why so angry?

"Well, I need that sub," he muttered meaningfully, though Hunk didn't catch on. Why would he, of course. Hunk didn't need to know anything. War wasn't for the innocent.

Hunk certainly didn't need to fight an ocean war.

"You aren't really mad at him for being good at something?" Hunk asked rather incredulously.

"He doesn't even have any friends, who does he intend to pilot with?" Lance ignored his perfectly valid reasoning.

Hunk looked a little disapproving at that, but he couldn't very well retaliate. Keith Kogane was a lone wolf, famous for it even.

"You're not letting this go, are you?" the Hamoan sighed, and he sounded just a little confused. "Since when are you so competitive?"

"I've always been competitive."

"But not mean-spirited."

Sure, on some level he knew he was being a bit shortsighted, but he needed to vent. He had a reason, an actual reason, to join the Navy, unlike most of his classmates. (If he said that out loud too, Hunk would look at him disapprovingly again.)

There's a war going on out there, he reminded himself sometimes, staring at the ceiling and envisioning an ocean.

The ocean was just next door. If he dared, he could jump right off the roof of the school and land on top of a submarine, just to touch the saltwater.

It occurred to Lance that having the sea so (much) close(r) yet so far away might be making his nerves skyrocket. Just a bit. He considered this and decided that complaining to Hunk was officially out of bounds. He was good at stewing in anger, he should just do that.

Still, he couldn't simply play off his resentment like it was nothing.

"It's just a normal rivalry, Hunk," he leaned casually into his bed, shoulders touching the wall. He nodded and smiled appropriately, but his buddy looked doubtful. Let him, Lance would never tell.

He couldn't possibly hope to describe the desperation he felt when he saw Kogane receive an approving nod from their teacher. It was like he was walking away from the sea all over again, but this time it was being dragged away before his very eyes.

Lance swallowed hard. If I had my skin…

There were plenty of battle subs. Lance didn't have to be better than Keith Kogane, he just had to be good.

English letters became scribbles when Lance was underwater, so he had to relearn controls from the start. Thankfully, Lance wouldn't have to get in a real sub for a while. There was a simulator to crash for that. 

He felt like a shark, crashing into the same rock.

Reading English wouldn't matter so much, if had my skin...

If he had his skin, he would leave it all behind, submarines be damned. He could learn some sorcery, he could learn to fight like Uncle Lot had tried teaching him years ago (he hadn't excelled and therefore gotten frustrated before reaching the best spells and moves).

Oh, but he was cursed to dry land in his human form. His only form. Because Lance didn't have his skin.

He tortured himself with these thoughts every night.

Lance, Hunk and Pidge watched as Keith got the Kraken. They got a regular research ship, big surprise. There was always next year (Lance found himself picking at his nails at the thought of waiting another year before stopping because he worked hard on those).

The real surprise was how high in the rankings Lance had managed to bring himself up despite the fact he was struggling to memorize the controls by location. He knew the main buttons, at least, but there was always something to press or switch depending on the situation and he couldn't count on his ability to read a manual under the sea.

Aloud, he would commend his abilities to instinct, but the truth was that he was just doing enough trial and error to learn from it. Possibly everyone he told knew the truth and simply let him have the benefit of the doubt.

Still, it felt good to somewhat rival Keith Kogane after all.

He had to admit: Kogane was a natural (but could he swim 20 km an hour!? Well, Lance can't either, not anymore, but he used to! And he'd only been ten! Imagine how fast he'd be now if he could—no use in imagining the impossible, never mind.)

There was an instance in which Lance thought he should probably get some pointers. He wasn't stupid enough to hold a grudge as priority over a battleship.

There was having a rivalry with a dude he hadn't met and then there was meeting with his uncle—if being part of the Garrett family had done nothing but make Lance more and more human, it had at least granted him the same appreciation for family values he been given back in selkieland.

Lance thought he could get over himself and ask Kogane how he did it. He must have caught the guy at a bad time or something, because his attitude was total bull shark if you ask Lance.

As a matter of fact, Hunk did ask Lance how his first meeting with Keith Kogane went that evening. Great buddy, seriously, Lance wouldn't trade him for the world.

"Well," he began slowly, "I said 'hi,' like you told me to."

Hunk nodded approvingly. Lance's original greeting was a rather rude one.

"So," he prompted, leaning in, ready to hear the beginnings of a beautiful friendship.

"He walked away," Lance responded.

Hunk sunk a little. "He just...walked away? Lance, you know that he could've just had like a bad day or something," he jumped to defend the bull shark.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Lance sighed. He was just a bit bitter that Hunk would be so compassionate to their (his) mortal enemy (there are better mortal enemies to have out there; starts with a G and almost rhymes with that cute girl in his mechanics class' name, Carla), but that was just his state of being. "So I tried again a while ago. He didn't have kind words."

Hunk frowned, but Lance refused to meet his eyes. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," and Lance was trying his hardest not to visibly grit his teeth because he is really trying to be a nice guy, "his day must've been real shitty because I'm not repeating any of our convo."

Lance didn't generally censor himself or anybody else. He liked shouting thing he shouldn't like shouting to the wind because it made Hunk's mom jump in her skin. It must have been rude.

"Who knew Keith would be so grouchy?" Hunk said. As much as Lance would love to take this opportunity to bring Hunk over to the dark (read: hate Keith Kogane) side, he was a bit more honest than that.

"No, I think he really was having a bad day. Like, bane of existence bad day, Hunk."

This got Hunk's attention. "What makes you say that?"

"He just looked like it," he said vaguely. Resentful. Intent on doing...something. Lance knew the feeling well. Kogane had lost something and he was going to get it back, no matter what.

He had a feeling it'd been stowing for a while now...

"Pidge was also pretty mad today," Hunk hummed in ponder. "You think it could be related?"

Lance jumped. "What? No way! Pidge hates Keith's guts just as much as I do!" He didn't. However, Lance had already skipped one opportunity to turn Hunk dark. He wasn't missing this one.

Hunk didn't believe a word he said.

3

Kogane dropped out of the Garrison, freeing up a spot for Lance and his crew to enter the elite squads. They were getting a battlesub.

It was a bittersweet victory for them.

When they heard the news, instead of celebrating immediately, Lance and Hunk had traded a look. While Hunk looked over at Pidge to poke at his reaction, Lance's glance strayed to the direction of the submarines in the ocean.

With the battlesub so nearly in his grasp, Lance realized a somewhat fatal flaw in his plan to steal a battlesub (he wasn't getting the Kraken, he was getting one Squidopulous).

1. Submarines were not meant to be manned alone.

2. Hunk and Pidge were not going to let Lance steal a submarine while they were on board.

3. Lance did not want to steal a submarine while Hunk and Pidge were on board.

Conflicted, one starry night, the young could-be-selkie escaped to the roof of the Garrison alone, where he could smell the sea salt, see the reflection in the sea, and think. It was so dark, he could almost convince himself he was underwater.

The door behind him opened and he turned to find Pidge carrying a bag, staring at him. He had never seemed nearly as entranced by Lance's eyes as most humans were. Lance suspected it was the glasses.

Eye to eye, still Pidge didn't move forward. Lance looked at his hands, which were reaching inside the bag. He really wanted to pry now. Damn, he should have brought Hunk.

Instead of being obvious, Lance smiled crookedly and patted the spot next to him. "We've known each other for how long? I'm not gonna kick you off the roof, Pidge."

The other boy grumbled half-heartedly and walked over. He plopped down and started setting up some...very fancy communication equipment. What was Pidge doing?

"You seemed busy," he muttered, glancing at Lance from behind his glasses.

"Brooding is not busy," Lance responded, poking a radar device suspiciously until the other swept his hands off. "Interrupt me anytime you see me brooding. It's not good for my health. Man, where's you get this stuff? Doesn't look like Garrison tech."

"I built it," Pidge said smugly. "With this thing, I can scan all the way to the edge of the solar system."

"The edge of the galaxy? What would you find out there?" He then added slyly, "I'm sure there's more interesting stuff under the sea. One missing Kerberos, perhaps?"

Pidge grumbled and looked away.

"So this is where you guys were!" He turned around to see Hunk poking his head out of the rooftop doorway. Like Lance and Pidge, he had left the garrison uniform behind and worn his casual clothing.

"Whoa," Lance cheered, "you snuck outta the barracks by choice!? Who are you and what have you done with Hunk Garrett?"

Pidge glanced behind him. "Oh, hey Hunk."

"Are you guys becoming best friends behind my back? Can I join in? We could be, like, the Garrison Three or something."

Lance pouted. "Pidge doesn't want to share his secret, we can't be best friends. Besides, you're already my best friend."

They grinned at each other, but Hunk sometimes had problems with priorities: On one hand, he loved Lance very much. On the other, he loved technology very much. On the third hand, he loved to touch other people's stuff.

Lance lost the battle for Hunk's heart very quickly. The other boy began messing around with Pidge's questionably suspicious tech, catching Pidge's glare.

"Don't touch that," he slapped Hunk's hand away.

It reminded Lance of the first time he'd met Hunk. And all of Hunk's cousins. And his cousins' children. The Garret fam couldn't keep their hands to themselves (It was why he was so good at hiding his own things around the house). The thought made him chuckle.

"And," Pidge continued, facing Lance again, "It's not a secret I want to hide."

"That's good, 'cause you aren't very good at it. You go ballistic every time one of the instructors brings it up. What's the deal?"

"Well- Second warning, Hunk," Pidge interrupted himself, eyeballing Hunk, who was touching an antenna. Hunk groaned.

"Come on, Pidge, just tell us already! We're a team. If we're gonna bond as one, we shouldn't keep any secrets." He narrowed his eyes and tried to look like a leader.

It didn't work, but Pidge fell for it all the same. "Fine," he said, not looking them in the eye. "But the world as you know it is about to change.

"The Kerberos Mission wasn't lost because of some malfunction or crew mista- STOP TOUCHING MY EQUIPMENT!" Pidge turned to yell at Hunk, whose red-hands were already reaching for the laptop.

Hunk groaned one final time and fell to his side, giving up and into his boredom.

"So I've been scanning the system and picking up chatter from the deep sea. It's weird—you would think scanning to the edge of the galaxy would be harder than scanning the Earth itself, but it's not. I had to enhance my tech. I couldn't even hear the fish at first after a certain point. It was like something was trying to hide under there."

Lance clacked his teeth, eyes widening just a bit. Pidge was...scanning territory that no human had ever been through. Territory no human was allowed into. He gulped.

"You believe me?" Pidge asked, taking in Lance's appearance.

"Wait," Hunk tuned into the conversation. "Are you telling me something's hiding from us under the sea?"

Pidge nodded. "It seems," he paused, choosing his words, "deeper than space. I don't understand how it hasn't been documented before. No matter how far I look for noise, I keep getting farther and farther. I was getting blocked at first, but I finally managed to get somewhere last month."

"That's insane," Lance said nervously. "There's no one down there."

"I'm serious!" Pidge picked up a notepad beside him. "They keep repeating one word. 'Voltron.' and tonight, it's going crazier than I have ever heard it.

Voltron is a fairy tale, he thought numbly.

"How—" Lance paled and stuttered, "how crazy?"

"ATTENTION STUDENTS. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. WE ARE ON LOCKDOWN. SECURITY SITUATION ZULU NINER. REPEAT: ALL STUDENTS ARE TO REMAIN IN BARRACKS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE."

Hunk looked around, searching for an intercom speaker to look at. "What's going on?"

Taking a step back, Lance grinned half-heartedly and pointed to the door. "We should-" go back inside.

"Is that a shark?" Hunk voiced over him, pointing at a disturbance in the water. Lance and Pidge turned, their breath catching.

It did look like a shark. A normal shark, and if they hadn't taken distance into consideration, all they would have asked themselves was how a shark had gotten so close to the base. Or how it was floating above water.

But they weren't blind.

"A very...very big shark," Hunk intoned. Pidge stared, affixing his glasses to better look at the distant...creature. He scavenged his bag and took out a pair of night vision binoculars.

"It's a ship," he said.

Lance grabbed the binoculars from his face, dragging Pidge along with, and took a look himself.

"Holy- That is not ours. That is-" a Galra ship. It looked weird, and he'd never seen one above water, but there was no mistaking Galra's signature fin. 

(Galra never seemed to belong in the sea, they weren't very good or fast swimmers, all they could do was breath underwater, so having ships made sense for them)

But what did this mean? The Galra couldn't be planning to take over the land too, right?

"Impossible." Lance finished his line of thought aloud.

"I told you!"

"So wait." Hunk stared at the bull shark shaped ship wide-eyed. "There really was someone hiding under water? But no one's ever been that far down before. It's too deep, the pressure would kill them."

Not with the right technology. Not with the right companions, Lance thought. Anyone could get deep enough underwater, so long as they had a selkie's coat, or a mermaid's kiss, or something equivalent.

There were even items that could replicate the tools for as long as it was required before reaching the threshold separating the undersea and the oversea. The ultimate scuba diving gear.

But that stuff was illegal. Humans weren't allowed in the undersea. The trenches of deep dark abyss should have kept them out like the deepening pressure as the water approached Earth's core. (At some point, the water faded into vapor under the pressure. Past that was a wall, and through that was the undersea.)

"We've gotta see that ship!" Pidge exclaimed, equipment packed. He grabbed his bag and ran to the door. "It'll be easier to see on level ground."

Lance followed automatically.

"This is the worst team-building exercise ever," he heard Hunk say behind him.

"Oh no," Lance halted at the door. "You," he pointed at his brother, "are going back to the barracks. You're going to sleep and when morning comes, we're going to sneak out and eat breakfast at that place we went to last week!" He moved to leave, glancing at Hunk's stunned form one last time. "Go to sleep!"

Then he ran after Pidge. He couldn't stop the little guy from chasing after the Galra. That wasn't a choice he could make for him, but he wasn't going to let Hunk follow them into the undersea. Usually Hunk would beg to be left behind—Lance could give him that this time.

Outside the roof door, Hunk stared at the spot Lance had been in just seconds ago. Lance usually beckoned him to follow him into danger. They had gone exploring caves when they were too little. He had dared Hunk to touch a snake, not once but twice! Lance had even dragged him into a fight they had nothing to do with!

"I thought he would say 'come on,'" Hunk said to himself. He followed them all the same.

Later, Pidge and Lance found themselves behind a large rock on the beach shore. Pidge was scanning for any way to read the situation.

"I can't see anything but metal and water, even with these stupid binoculars. Got any X-ray glasses?" Lance complained under his breath.

Pidge said, "Obviously not."

"Aw man," a familiar voice replied behind them. "Guess there's nothing to do but head back to the barracks, right?"

"Hunk!" Lance almost shrieked, but Pidge reached up to shut his mouth shut with both his hands. He beckoned them to look back at the Garrison, where guards were already joining forces to ride a ship toward the UFO (unidentified floating object). Lance mumbled into his hands, glaring at Hunk.

"What was that?"

Lance swung Pidge's hands away and whisper-yelled, "I thought I told you to go back to sleep!"

"And leave you to get carried off by mermaids alone with Pidges?"

"Those aren't mermaids! Mermaids wouldn't-" He cut himself off. Sirens might, actually. That was the difference between sirens and mermaids, but it wasn't very clear at first glance. Although sirens could fly, their feathers were well hidden and—

Sirens haven't hunted humans in centuries, he reminded himself.

Pidge's headphones were skewed, having been pulled away from his work to silence Lance. He fixed them as he said, "Mermaids wouldn't need a ship to take them to the surface, Hunk. Now stop discussing mythological beings. It's much more likely that the people inside that shark ship are previous inhabitants of Atlantis."

Lance scoffed. Atlantis. Another fairy tale. Like the Castle of Dolphins. Or the Kingdom of Ys.

"That's just silly."

"Mermaids aren't real."

"This is going on too long," Lance intervened, not giving his own two cents on the matter. "You got something Pidge? Hunk, you can go back if you want."

"I followed you here, why would I go back?"

"Nothing. There's no cameras of anything, and all I can hear is someone breathing. Wait, they're talking."

"Can anybody hear me? Please," the voice begged in Pidge's ears. He frowned.

"He's trying to communicate," Pidge said

"We need to prepare, we need to find Voltron. Hello? Does anybody copy?"

"Voltron, he said Voltron!"

Lance and Hunk glanced at each other and then pressed their ears to Pidge's headphones, trying to make out anything they could.

"We need to hurry, we need to..." The voice weakened and stopped.

"I think he passed out. At least...I hope he passed out. We have to help him," Pidge looked into Lance's eyes and Lance nodded.

"Uh, I hate to be the voice of reason, always," Hunk muttered the last word under his breath, "but there's no way we are getting to that shark ship without a boat or a sub. Besides, the Garrison guards are probably gonna come in any second now to take a look."

"We could steal a sub," Lance suggested immediately, like he had thought of this before. Well, he had, but he didn't need them to know that.

"Or," Pidge remarked and grabbed his arm, turning him to look at the other side of the beach, where he pointed, "We could use that."

That was a guy dragging a speedboat across the sand. Lance recognized him immediately.

"No way," Lance grinded he teeth. "Oh, he is not going to beat us in there! That guy is always trying to one-up me!"

"Who is it?" asked Hunk.

"Keith!"

Pidge grabbed his bag as Hunk started to run after Lance. "Kogane?"

"Are you sure?"

"I'd recognize that mullet anywhere!"

They reached him before the boat was in the water. Immediately Lance started dragging the vessel from the other side, intent on beating Keith at it. "Nope. No you— No, no, no. No, you don't. I'm saving the guy in that ship."

Keith was masked, but his mullet was prominent as ever. His red jacket stood out again the sand, which was not what Lance would call sneaky, but so far he hadn't been caught, so there was that.

"Who are you?" Keith didn't let the strangers stop his line of action, especially seeing as the disagreeable teen was actually helping him despite his words.

"Who am I? Uh, the name's Lance." He blinked twice as Keith continued to stare at him face. "We were in the same class at the Garrison."

"Really? Are you an engineer?"

"No! I'm a pilot! We were, like, rivals. You know, Lance and Keith, neck and neck?"

Keith continued to look him in the eyes, unfazed. Huh.

"Oh wait," he recognized him as the ship splashed into the water. "I remember you! You're a research pilot."

"Well, not anymore," Lance looked at him bitterly. "I'm a fighter class now, thanks to you washing out."

"Well, congratulations." Keith responded in the same tone and turned away to start the engine and steer. Hunk and Pidge looked at each other and then at the other two before shrugging and getting on the boat with them.

"You guys wanna hitch a ride? Sure, go ahead, no need to ask," Keith said, rolling his eyes when the other three made themselves comfortable.

Behind them, the Garrison's vessels started to move forward.

"They are not going to be happy with us out here," Hunk vocalized. The engine was quiet, but the boat was not invisible, especially with four teenagers crowding it.

Keith grabbed a bag and threw it into his arms. "Here. Use these."

Hunk pulled out a sphere and looked over it curiously. "What am I doing here?" 

"Throw it overboard. Aim away from us and the ship, it should keep them distracted."

Still dumbfounded, Hunk followed directions. The sphere stayed underwater for a second, long enough for Lance to say, "Hate to break it to ya, but nothing hap—", before the water's surface exploded.

"A bomb!?"

"It's not a bomb."

Pidge broke in, "It exploded. Ergo, a bomb. But it's probably designed to only explode underwater."

"Hey, I wanna try," Lance said with a grin, reaching into the bag and swiping a bomb. He threw it in the same direction as Hunk's, enjoying the wild waves and splashes it made.

It worked. The Garrison guards took a detour toward the explosions, putting off the search on the UFO. Their boat went unnoticed.

...

"Shiro," Keith breathed a sigh of relief when he turned the body over and checked his breath. Shirogane was, in fact, passed out.

"Shiro? Whoa, the dude from the Kerberos misson? That guy's my hero," Lance exclaimed, helping Keith by putting one of Shiro's arms over his shoulder. "I thought he was missing."

He was found, now. A scar on his face told Lance it hadn't been easy.

"Everyone did," Pidge said. "I told you!"

"Chill. I never said I didn't believe you," Lance said, having a hard time expressing himself without the ability to put him hands forward to calm down his crewmate. He tried shrugging and stopped when Shiro started slipping off him. 

"Will you guys hurry up?" Hunk's upside down head poked out from the hatch. The fin was visible behind him, but mostly, Lance saw night and Hunk.

"We need you to grab him. Glasses, bring the ladder down will you?"

"Wait," Pidge said as he did so, "Is the boat going to hold all of us?"

Keith gave him a look. "No."

Didn't mean they couldn't all get on it. They managed to stow away into the night without even a chase scene. Lance almost felt disappointed.

Chapter Text

1

After after the captain woke up and everyone was introduced, Pidge and Keith had a hard time keeping their eyes off Shiro.

"I need a moment alone," Shirogane said, looking very depressed.

Lance frowned, watching him exit the hut that was Keith's home. It was in the middle of nowhere, semi-surrounded by cliffs that kept away the greenery, making the place look like a desert rock. On the other side, the Sun had yet to poke its head, but Lance could still make out sand and beach.

The smell of salt still permeated the air. It was a very wide beach, but a beach it still was.

The silence was uncomfortable, so Lance forced his crew to make small talk while Keith worried himself sick near a window facing the beach. Pidge checked his equipment, emitting the same mood.

Keith left the house at dawn and came back a moment later with Shiro. He revealed a billboard with maps and pictures and musings pinned to it.

"This is how I found you."

"What have you been working on?" Shiro asked.

"I can't explain it, really. After getting booted from the Garrison, I was kind of lost and found myself drawn out to this place. It was like...some energy was telling me to search."

Lance crossed his arms, studying the board. The maps had a series of small isles and the edge of Mauna, but it was mostly blue—ocean.

"Looking for what?" Shiro asked.

"Well, I didn't really know at the time. The I stumbled across this area." he touched one of the bigger isles, which was circled three times, labeled "ENERGY SOURCE" and surrounded by smaller circles at the edges of the isle.

"It's full of caverns, and I found an outcropping of giant boulders with caves covered in these ancient markings." Lance looked to the side, where the picture of a cave was surrounded by cave drawings. They depicted...dolphins?

Lance's teeth clicked, his eyes widened.

"Each tells a slightly different story about a blue dolphin Some of them are even underwater, but they all share clues leading to some event. Some arrival happening last night." Keith looked at Shiro. "Then, you showed up."

Lance was still entranced by the drawings when Shiro called his name. He took the man's hand in greeting automatically. It's not human, he realized, staring at it as the man continued to shake Pidge's hand.

"So, did anyone else from your crew make it out?" The youngest boy asked.

Shiro frowned. "I'm not sure. I remember the mission and being captured. After that, just bits and pieces."

"Yeah," Hunk raised his hands to query. "Sorry to interrupt, but back to the guys who captured you? Were they mermaids?" He was completely serious, and Pidge facepalmed.

"Of course not, you buffoon-"

"Actually," Shiro interrupted him, "I don't remember much. All I remember is the word...'Voltron.' It's some kind of weapon they're looking for, but I don't know why. But whatever it is," his eyes caught a serious glint, "we need to find it before they do."

"Oh, please," Lance laughed half-heartedly. "Voltron can't possibly be real!" It was a little kid's story! Like moon cheese and aliens, come on!

They ignored him. "Well," Hunk offered, "Last night, I was rummaging through Pidge's stuff and I found this picture." He held up a picture of Pidge and a girl posing in front of the sea. "Look, it's his girlfriend," he chuckled.

"Hey, give me that!" Pidge snatched it. "What are you doing in my stuff?"

"I was looking for a candy bar! But, then, I started reading his diary." He took out a small book from his pocket. Outraged, Pidge snatched it back too.

Lance almost felt sorry for the little dude. Almost. He'd been dealing with the same stuff for years. Garretts, geez.

Hunk continued, "I noticed the repeating series of numbers the mermaids are searching for looks a lot lie a Fraunhofer line."

"Frown who?"

Hunk went on with science and Lance glanced over at Pidge, who was reading over his diary with his back turned on them. He almost managed to read a passage when Pidge slammed the book shut on his nose.

"Ow!"

"I thought it might be this Voltron," Hunk finished the bout. "I think I can build a machine to look for it, like a Voltron Geiger counter."

"Hunk." Lance crossed his arms proudly, "You big, gassy genius!"

"It's pretty fascinating, actually," Hunk reached another pocket for a sheet of paper. "The wavelength looks like this."

Almost immediately, Keith grabbed it. "Give me that." He made his way to the billboard again, paper facing them. He held the chart below a picture of a series of seastacks.

That looks familiar, Lance thought.

2

"I'm getting a reading," Hunk said, looking at a little radar he'd built. Pidge was holding the antenna, pointing toward the seastacks that looked a lot like the wavelength of a series of numbers meant to look for mythological dolphin robots.

He started walking, Pidge forced to follow closely, leading them near the seashore before turning a swift right and walking to a deep incline full of roots and greenery. Lance's heart almost leapt out of his chest, but he followed. The water licked at his shoes, but he could feel nothing.

"Whoa." Underneath some brush was a cave.

Then went inside. "Whoa!"

"These are the dolphin carvings I was telling you about," Keith gestured to the drawings on the entrance walls.

Lance looked around, speculatively. His little kid heart was applauding the adventure, awaiting the arrival of the famous Paladin heroes of Voltron to come save him and his family from the Galra.

Grumbling to himself, he ignored his kid heart and looked closely at one wall covered in abandoned cobwebs. There is no way Voltron is real.

He cleared the cobweb away, rubbing the a familiar mark on the wall. Before he could decipher its meaning and origin, it started to glow blue.

"Whoa. Whoa!" He stepped away and realized the entire cave was colored in blue. All the drawings had started to glow. "What!"

"They've never done that before," Keith informed them as the floor below started to glow as well.

They fell through the ground, screaming as they went, too late to jump out of the way. They were plunged underwater.

Lance could taste the sea.

Lance gasped, and the water entered his mouth. An unwelcome taste mixed with the bitter sensation of being back in the ocean, now with kicking legs.

His legs kicked, the sea kicked back. As his legs kicked, the sea kicked back. The sea was kicking him out, and it was all his fault.

Panicked, Lance made his way to the closest shore he could reach. He spluttered out sea water, ignoring when everyone else made their way onto the rocks too.

He was still breathing hard, he was still wet with seawater, but he was out on land where people like him belonged. He ignored the urge to cry and looked back at his companions.

"Y-you okay, Hunk?" He had never felt drowning before, and he kind of had, it was such a hard reality—

"Am I okay? Are you? I thought you were over your fear of the ocean." Oh, so Hunk could tell?

Way to put me out there, buddy, Lance thought sardonically, giving Hunk an equally sardonic look.

"You're afraid of water?" Keith looked at him like he was crazy.

"I'm not afraid of water," Lance intoned at the same time as Hunk answered, "He's terrified."

Pidge also seemed confused. "But you're training to pilot a submarine!"

Lance looked away in frustration, but he couldn't glare for long. He gasped. Just a few yards away...was a dolphin.

A giant. Blue. Dolphin. Surrounded by a force field.

"The-the-the-the-the," he pointed at the blue dolphin (no, the Blue Dolphin), a giddy feeling in his heart as he realized that Voltron might not, after all, just be a fairy tale.

"Is that it?" Pidge said, sounding disappointed. "Is that the Voltron?"

Still speechless, Lance wanted to tell her off. Of course that was not the Voltron! Voltron was much bigger, and it looked like a siren, not a dolphin, but this was still the blue dolphin! It was the Blue Dolphin! The second most treasured of the Dolphins in Lance's memories because it represented water!

"It must be," Shiro answered her calmly.

How are you guys not freaking out about this too!? Lance wanted to yell. What kind of stories did your moms read you when you were little!?

Humans...

"This is what's been causing all of this crazy energy out here," Keith said.

And Lance finally calmed down enough to realize that...Keith was right. The Blue Dolphin was emitting a crazy amount of quintessencial energy. Lance had simply written it off as the ocean, but now that he was closer, the pull from the ocean and the pull from the Blue Dolphin was different. Similar, but not quite.

He'd been ignoring the Blue Dolphin all this time in his attempt to keep calm.

He'd been ignoring a war machine of the AGES in order to get a mediocre submarine.

By Aegir, he was an idiot.

Keith walked forward first. They followed post-haste.

Lance continued to look at the Dolphin. He moved from side to side, but no matter where he went, the eyes followed. It was actually starting to creep him out.

"Does anybody else get the feeling this is staring at them?"

"No."

"Yeah. The eyes are totally following me," Lance continued, making a show by moving his head around.

"I wonder how we get through," Keith said, rubbing his hands against the force field. It didn't seem to be dangerous, but it was also not very permeable.

Lance frowned, sad to see he wouldn't get to ride the Blue Dolphin after all. Not that anyone but the Blue Paladin could drive it.

"Say we wait for the pilot," he answered, nearing the force field as well. He looked up at the dolphin, whose eyes were still following his every movement. The wall of the force field reminded him of a door for a reason that made no sense. Maybe... "Maybe you just have to knock," Lance added, raising his hand and knocking on the force field twice.

The effect was sudden and powerful. The force field fled from the scene, and the waterbed beneath the Dolphin started to glow like the drawings in the cave. Most spectacular of all, the Blue Dolphin's eyes started to glow.

Lance could hear Pidge and Hunk yelling behind him, but he couldn't take his eyes off the Dolphin. He saw...Voltron. It flashed, in front of his eyes, in front of all their eyes! Five dolphins, purple, red, green, yellow and blue, combining to become a siren. No, that wasn't a siren, that was... It flung out a red sword. Flames. Underwater.

"Whoa," they all synchronized.

Lance spoke first. "Uh, did everyone just see that?"

"Voltron is a robot mermaid," Hunk exclaimed, his feeling represented aggressively in his face. "Voltron is a huge, huge, awesome robot mermaid!"

Mermaids don't have legs, Lance wanted to correct him.

"Mermaids don't have legs," Pidge would not be silenced, "and this thing is only one part of it!" He was clinging to the straps of his backpack, clearly surprised. "I wonder where the rest of them are."

"This is what they're looking for," Shiro uttered.

"Incredible," said Keith.

The huge dolphin began roll its way toward them. For the first time, Lance realized it had wheels. It's snout nearly ran them over, and Hunk and Pidge screamed.

The Blue Dolphin's mouth opened, and a ramp lowered itself to them.

Lance would like to think the moment was a special one, but the only thing on his mind had been that he would make a better pilot that Keith Kogane. It wasn't the childhood memory that sparked his motive to enter the dolphin, nor was it some mystical force that beckoned him to save the world or anything like that.

He just really wanted to one-up Keith.

Lance chuckled to himself, barely looking around to take in the sight of the Blue Dolphin's interior before sitting on the only seat available.

He let his giddy child heart laugh at the feeling. "Here we go," Lance crossed his arms confidently, feeling very much like the Blue Paladin.

The euphoria didn't last long, as the seat moved forward haphazardly, causing Lance to scream and groan after hitting his head on the wall in front. He lifted his head, rubbing at it only to see that screens had started to appear before him.

"Mermaid tech," he muttered to himself. He could read underwater now. Finally.

"See," Hunk whispered behind him. "He thinks its mermaids too!"

He didn't think, he knew.

The screen brightened and showed the view from the dolphin's eyes. They admired the screen with excitement.

"Okay guys," Hunk said. "I feel the need to point out, just so that we're all aware, we are all in some kind of futuristic alien fish head right now! Actually, scratch that. Futuristic mermaid fish head."

"Futuristic?" Lance couldn't contain the judgement in his voice. This was not any sort of human science! It was a discovery made by mermaids, shaped by sirens, powered by magic and research that had been discovered centuries ago! It wasn't futuristic. It was ancient and powerful!

He took a look around him again, now using his human shaped eyes to take it all in.

"It does seem...futuristic," he murmured. He was shot out of his train of thought with the sound of a dolphin's squeal.

"Whoa! Did you guys just hear that," Lance looked around.

"Hear what?"

"I think it's...talking to me," Lance leaned into the controls, looking for some big START button. He knew how to speak dolphin as much as Hunk knew how to speak dog or cat. Which was to say, not nearly enough.

He pressed what seemed to be the right combination of buttons. The dolphin hopped in its spot, splashing the water heavily and emitting a strong chortle.

"Okay, got it. Now let's try this." Lance took the levers into his hands and pushed.

The Blue Dolphin crashed into whatever got in its way until it reached the ocean, and it hopped inside like they had been waiting their whole life to swim again. Lance stifled a cry of excitement. They had been waiting a long time to go back in.

He blinked a little, the hands that were suddenly grabbing him in a panic making him focus away from the dolphin. He had started to refer to himself as we. He and the Blue Dolphin.

By Aegir, am I the next Blue Paladin?

The dolphin shot forward with his feeling, resonance in every movement.

"You are the worst pilot ever!" Keith yelled.

They were all screaming after that. Once they started doing silly dolphin tricks on the water's surface, Lance looked back at them. "Isn't this awesome?"

"Make it stop, make it stop." Hunk looked close to throwing up.

"I'm not doing anything! It's on autopilot."

Even if he could, Lance refused to do such a thing. It almost felt like he was back in the sea, in his own coat again. He almost felt selkie. He was the most selkie he had been in a long time.

A tear managed its way out of his eye, forcing him to look pointedly away from the gang.

"Where are you going!?" Keith shrieked.

"I said it's on autopilot," Lance answered. "It says there's another ship approaching the island. I think we're supposed to stop it."

"What did it say exactly?" Pidge remarked, not feeling safe in the hands of his pilot. That was a little insulting. Hadn't he chosen to follow Lance to the deep sea already, why was he freaking out now of all times?

The Blue Dolphin's wild ride stabilized as they spoke, so Lance took his hands off the controls. He glanced at Pidge, irritated. "It's not like it's saying words. It's more like feeding ideas into my brain. Kind of."

Now that he thought about it, he was a little unsure of how much fighting off the approaching vessel was his idea and how much of it was the dolphin's.

Behind him, Hunk had a "better" idea. "If this is the weapon they're looking for, why don't we just, I don't know, give it to them? Maybe they'll leave us alone. Sorry dolphin, nothing personal"

"No," Lance replied without hesitation.

Shiro added, "You don't understand. These monsters spread like a plague throughout the ocean, destroying everything in their path. There's no bargaining with them. They won't stop until everything is dead."

Lance's mind flashed to a time he'd much rather not be remembering, especially not in the current turmoil. After it had occured, he had done his best to forget it, to think of only the aftermath and what he would do, but watching the Galra take over his community's turf...

His lips quivered and he swallowed hard at the lump in his throat, refusing to get sentimental in front of everyone else. The dolphin's wild ride stuttered.

Hey, he called out to the Dolphin. Shouldn't we, like, head to the Castle of Dolphins or something? We're not going to bring them with us, are we?

No response.

Because, well, Hunk's not very good with motion sickness, you know? And, and Shiro looks like he had a tough time. I'm pretty sure he was captured by the Galra and-

-and he had made it out alive.

Suddenly, Pidge's interest in the rest of Shiro's crewmates made sense. Most of the undersea was working on the same time as the surface (some parts were slower, some faster), and Kerberos had been missing for months.

It held nothing against the years Lance's family had been missing, but it meant the Galra weren't killing mercilessly. They were, but at least not everybody.

Maybe...his family was still alive.

Lance had only ever thought of looking for his uncle. The neighbors he hadn't seen captured. The one's he admired for their magic and their fighting moves, those ready for an attack and those lucky enough to escape. But the thought that he could see his parents and his sisters again.

He groaned as he leaned forward, intently looking away from everyone else.

Make the tears stop, he begged the Blue Dolphin. It finally "responded," however that worked, but all Lance could detect was smug and hints of sorrow that had no business being inputted directly into his consciences.

"Lance," Hunk asked in a panic. " You good, buddy?"

"I'm good. Better than good, in fact. Hey, Hunk, I have something to tell you when we get back. Maybe all of you, depending on how things go after this."

"Huh?"

"What is that?" Pidge pointed at the screen, where all sorts of creatures danced in front of the Dolphin's eye beams.

"Fish," Keith answered.

"No, I mean behind the fish!"

They were heading to the deepest part of the oversea, and the dolphin, of course, had not given in to the pressure of the water. There were trenches far deeper than the one they were in, but even in those, the Blue Dolphin would not be phased.

"Holy crow! Is that really a mermaid ship?"

"Stop calling them mermaids! But...it's got the same fin as the other one, even if the shape is a little different," Pidge responded.

"It looks like a base," Lance said.

"It looks more like a knife to me," Keith joined in. What the hell?

Shiro took a moment to form his own response to the ship, and it took Lance an equal amount of time to remember he was technically a refugee. "They found me."

That was when the fire nation attacked.

The Galra empire was not the fire nation, but it sounded good in Lance's brain as he tried his hardest to work with the dolphin in avoiding the beams of light being thrown at them from the Galra ship's cannons.

"Alright." He was freaking out a little. "Okay." But he would remain calm. Blue would protect them. "I think I know what to do."

"Be careful, man! This isn't a simulator!" Way to contribute to the panic, Pidge.

"Well that's good." Lance grinned at him. "I always wreck the simulator." Behind him, all four of his companions paled. The dolphin shot forward.

Submarines work nothing like this, he pondered as his Dolphin spit out a blue beam of light at the vessel. Fish were running away from the heat and the movement, making the water sway around them. His beam stayed on course.

When he had been a child, shooting his own weak beams of light, the water had easily swayed his magic from side to side. At most he'd been able to make a little cave light for exploration. He had hated refraction with a passion.

The Dolphin's beams were brighter, stronger, and much more lethal. Refraction was nothing to them.

They swarm toward the slow Galra ship, dodging and dismissing the smaller beams of purple that shot at them. With some ease, they made their way to the ship's exterior and the dolphin's tail seemed to become twenty times as sharp as before. It left a hazardous streak on the ship, which exploded when they swam away.

"Nice job, Lance," Shiro praised.

"I think it's time to get these guys away from the surface."

"We're nowhere near the surface," Pidge said. To him, the bottom of the ocean was as far as you could go, right.

"Then let's get further away," he corrected. "We're too close to Oceania for comfort."

They swam away, until they reached a dark trench. Then he started to dive. They couldn't tell, but it was deeper than any human had any right to be already.

"Wait wait wait," Hunk shrieked. "We're not going in there, are we!?"

They did. The Galra ship was now faster, but it chased after them rather...peacefully.

"That's weird," Lance remarked as their journey into the darkness neared its end. "They're not trying to shoot us. They're just chasing."

"Okay, seriously, now we think having mermaids following us is good? I am not on board with this new direction, guys, those guys probably eat people," Hunk complained.

"Not mermaids," Lance frowned, his glare on the screen. "Mermaid aren't the conquest type. They don't eat people either."

"Where are we?" Keith tuned in. A cloudy wall was now covering the Blue Dolphin's vision, despite the light in its eyes lighting their path. Very suddenly, a wall presented itself in front of them.

The children behind Lance screamed. "A dead end?"

"Now that I think about it," Pidge fixed his glasses, "the ocean isn't that deep at all."

Lance swallowed. "This may seem crazy, but I think the Blue Dolphin wants us to go through."

"What?"

Lance glanced at Shiro. "You're senior officer, what do you think we should do?" It wasn't only his own life on the line here. Lance couldn't bust into the undersea—even at the dolphin's sage beckoning—just like that.

"Whatever is happening, the dolphin knows more than we do," Shiro responded. "I say we trust it, but we're a team now. We should decide together." The moment he'd said "team," Lance knew what his answer should be.

Instead of telling them they should stay out of it like a good teammate, however, he agreed like everybody else. Pidge put a hand on his shoulder. "Alright. Guess we're all ditching class tomorrow."

His hand clenched around the controls, and before anybody could suggest another direction or ask why the wall looked so perfectly formed, he burst forward and into the metal. It didn't break away like the caves and seastacks had before. It morphed around them.

3

The metal wall didn't work like a normal passage. It morphed around people like a slimy plastic wrapper. Bad imagery, Lance thought to himself.

Instead of leading to the same spot, however, the wall became an elevator of sorts. No, not an elevator, a crosswalk. Under the sea. Instead of roads, tunnels. When the journey through slimy wet plastic metal was done, the crew remained silent. Lance spoke first.

"That was..."

Hunk immediately tried to hold off from throwing up all over the Blue Dolphin's insides.

"Which tunnel are we taking?" Keith asked behind him.

There were, indeed, quite a few tunnels surrounding them.

"We're not being followed anymore, right?" Hunk worried to his left. No.

"Eenie, meenie, meinie, mo," Lance sang with a grin, well aware of which direction to take. Thank you, Blue Dolphin.

They crashed into a wall again, only to discover it had a hidden tunnel inside.

"How'd you know that was there?"

"Ask the dolphin," Lance said.

"Where are we going?" Shiro wondered, looking around the screen. "Where are we? The wall..."

"The obvious answer here is magic," Hunk reasoned. "But...where are we going?"

Lance smiled to himself. Not far off from the real answer at all. "The dolphin," he replied, "I think it's going home." To the Castle of Dolphins.

Lance jumped in his seat. The Lost Castle of Dolphins.

The tunnel led them to a deeper location, but they soon reached a place where the sea became breathable. (What? Sirens and selkies don't have gills, you think they can breathe under normal water? Sirens and mermaids used to hang out a lot, and not every siren could get a mermaid kiss.)

"Guys. Personal space. Hunk, your breath is killing me," Lance said as they gathered around him, closer than before. The dolphin had started to shake as it landed, wheels touching the ground with a loud noise. They rolled forward a little ways, stumbling over every available rock.

We are not clear for landing, Lance berated. Then again, maybe no one in the castle knew the Blue Dolphin was returning home. The way would have been cleaned if it had.

Come to think of it, where was the Castle of Dolphins?

"Why did we think trusting a mechanical dolphin was a good idea?" Hunk asked, holding on to Lance to avoid falling. "Why are we trusting a sentient metal dolphin again?"

"It got us away from the shark warship, didn't it?" Lance challenged.

"I don't know if you noticed," Keith leaned in to say, "but we're in a dolphin warship. There's not a big difference."

"Oh," Lance smirked. "You scared?"

"With you at the helm? Terrified." They glared at each other.

Shiro intervened. "Alright, knock it off. No one's happy to be in this situation, but we're here now."

Speak for yourself, Lance thought back at him, I might get to meet a real princess!

"If we want to get through this," their senior officer continued, "we've got to do it together."

"So what do we do?" Pidge asked.

Shiro thought about it. "First, we find out where we're headed." They all looked at the pilot. "Lance?"

Oh shit, what do I say?

Blue Dolphin was silent. "Uh...I don't know." They were headed to the Castle of Dolphins, weren't they? Where was it, then? Lance looked ahead and grinned.

They gave him a look.

"I'm sorry. The dolphin's not talking to me anymore. Wait! Wait, wait, wait! Shh," Lance silenced them. "Listen. I think I hear something."

"I'm hearing it too," said Keith.

"It's uh—" Hunk added, "It's kind of a— a high-pitched squeal? But not like a dolphin's, like—"

When the smell caught up to them, the three teens and adult covered their noses and looked away from Lance, groaning at him. Lance laughed.

"But seriously," he said, unbothered by their glares, "there's a castle up ahead."

They looked. There, in all its glory, was the Castle of Dolphins. White, shining, brightly lit with a blue and polished white surface. It gleamed under the light of the dolphin's beams, and even the Sun's light seemed to reach it despite the fact that the Sun's light was nowhere near the bottom of the undersea.

"Where is that light coming from?" Pidge asked.

"The Sky." Lance said.

"That's no—"

They came to a sudden stop at the castle's entrance.

"Keep your guard up," Shiro told them when the dolphin refused to move forward. "My crew was captured once. I'm not going to let it happen again."

The dolphin's mouth opened and the intake of water washed everyone but Lance out of the ship.

Way to go, dolphin.

They went screaming. Lance stood up to try and help them, or at least tell them that the water was, in fact, healthy for their lungs, but they were already gone.

It soon washed out, leaving him, dry, inside the Blue Dolphin's head.

"So you know," he said aloud, speaking to the Blue Dolphin. "About my skin." It was leaving him the choice to go out alone, by his own volition.

Before, he'd had no way of reaching the undersea without his skin. Swimming felt horrible, he couldn't breathe underwater, and he had had no chance of diving to the deep ocean to the barrier before drowning or succumbing to decompression.

His crew was out there: his brother, his friend, his rival, and his hero. He couldn't very well act like a coward now.

"This is going to suck," Lance said with a grimace. He gave himself a running start before diving in after his crew.

The sea kicked back at him, but as long as it didn't drown him, he would survive.

Karma. Karma was going to punish him for this later. Nobody said his god would be nice...

Outside the dolphin, Hunk was still worrying about the drowning part. Most of them were bemused by their ability to not die, but Lance focused on their ability to swim forward.

"We should go in," he told them, putting a hand on Hunk's shoulder. His brother stared at him.

"You're swimming," he remarked. "I'm speaking!" More excitable than before, and less afraid, he continued to freak out. "I'm talking underwater! Oh, I knew this had something to do with magic!"

Lance grinned at him knowingly. Shiro spoke.

"We should move forward."

Behind them, the dolphin jumped in its place, shaking the ground. It released a strong chortle and clicks.

Hunk cowered at the movement, too close for comfort. He fell backward when the castle walls (bigger than they initially seemed) opened at the Dolphin's beckoning.

"The door opened," Hunk said, hiding behind Shiro. "Guess it's not going to eat us."

"Eat us?"

"We probably look like delicious mackerel to it!"

The others looked at each other.

"I guess we...go in," Shiro suggested, already swimming forward.

The inside of the castle was dark, and more human shaped than expected. When Hunk spoke, his words echoes back at him, but no one answered.

"From the size of the dolphin, I expected the halls to be wider," Pidge said. They were plenty big for the five of them. They found a set of stairs. "Do dolphins even need stairs?"

Lance sat down immediately. "People can get tired of swimming, don't you think?"

"Only because you never do," Hunk retorted. "I didn't even think you could swim."

Lance didn't answer.

"Do we even need to keep swimming?" Hunk continued. "It's not like sinking will make us drown."

Shiro looked around, taking the advice and falling to the ground. He called out. Instead of a person, some sort of scanner responded. The light shined above them, scanning their bodies. Lance looked up, having evaded the scanning from the steps.

Shiro didn't receive an answer when he questioned the non-sentient device, but Lance could take a guess as to what it wanted with them. When the Galra technology that was Shiro's arm was approved, Lance figured Galra had once been accepted into the castle.

Which made sense. The Black Paladin had been rumored to be part shark.

They followed the lighted path the castle provided for them.

It led them up and down, but eventually they arrived to a chamber of beds. Well, beds was not exactly what Lance would call them, but they were tubes meant to be slept in. Mermaid technology, of course. The healing powers of mermaid witches was famous.

"Mermaid tears," Lance uttered under his breath, smiling at the myth. Not mermaid tears, obviously. Yet people like his Uncle Lot had often said the mermaids were such good healers because of their tears.

Lance walked up to one of the vertical containers.

"This must be some kind of control room," Pidge said, walking to a device that lit up in his presence. Two chambers rose from the ground, revealed by a veil of fogged water and air bubble. The rushing waves made by the chambers almost swept Lance off the ground, unaware.

"Are these guys...dead?" Hunk whimpered behind the control panel. The unused chambers hid themselves behind him.

The answer came when the chamber's barrier dissolved and showed a white haired, dark-skinned female with mermaid markings under her eyes. A crown on her head. A tail instead of legs.

"Father," she gasped, reaching forward only to fall over. They floated, she wouldn't reach the ground even if she was going to fall momentarily, but Lance still shot forward to catch her.

She looked up at his face, and Lance wondered if what he felt when looking into her eyes was the same feeling humans felt when they looked into his.

"Is that a mermaid?" Pidge said behind him.

"See, I told you so!" exclaimed Hunk.

"Hello," Lance smiled charmingly. She was unfazed. Right, his eyes wouldn't work on mermaids (or most anybody under the sea for that matter).

"Who are you? Where am I?"

"I'm Lance. And you're right here, in my arms," he continued.

"Your ears," she said.

He tried to look at his ears, an impossible task. "Yeah?"

"They're hideous. What's wrong with them?"

This was not going to work out. Lance let her go, certain she could hold herself up now. He responded appropriately. "Nothing's wrong with them! They heard exactly what you said about them!"

She grabbed his poor ear and his arm, bringing him to his knees and to tears in a second. "Who are you? Where is King Alfor? What are you doing in my castle?

Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow!

"We were brought by the Blue Dolphin! Please let go, ow!"

She did, thank Poseidon. "How do you have the Blue Dolphin? What happened to its paladin?" She looked to the rest of the crew, who were all still mighty shocked. Keith, ready for a fight; Shiro rather frightened for Lance; Hunk, hiding behind Shiro; Pidge observing at the very back. "What are you all doing here? Unless..."

Lance stood up and rubbed his ear, eyeing her suspiciously.

"How long has it been?" she asked their eldest.

"We don't know what you're talking about," Shiro answered. "Why don't you tell us who you are? Maybe we can help."

She gained a sudden confidence. The sort that came with repetition. "I am Princess Allura of Ys."

Lance's eyes widened. He covered his mouth with his hands and lifted his knees up to his torso, barely containing whatever cry of excitement wanted to escape him.

The Princess of Ys? How many myths were coming true today? He felt a bit feint.

"But I thought this was the Castle of Dolphins!" He shouted, not able to contain it after all.

She gave him a look. "It is. I've got to find out where we are and how long we've been asleep."

She walked to the control panel and pulled up a screen, meanwhile Pidge watched. Lance heard a scream behind him and turned away from the princess.

"Enemy combatants!" A red haired man with a mustache yelled, also marked as mermaid. He didn't fall over, so Lance didn't have to catch him too. As a matter of fact, when the mermaid launched himself at Lance, the teen dodged his tail fin and stared at the fallen figure.

"Ah! Quiznak! You're lucky I have a case of the old 'sleep chamber knees,'" he told Lance, getting up fast and facing the boy.

"You don't have knees," Lance refuted.

"My fins are stiff," the man shook his tail. "Otherwise, I'd grab your head like this, wrap you up like so—" He demonstrated what he would do very well. Lance relaxed, seeing as this man was no foe. "One, two, three," he snapped his fingers, "Sleepy time!"

"Well, before you did that, I would—" Lance shot out a karate chop toward him, grunting heroically. His team stared at them as they continued their pseudo-fight. "Like that."

"Man, these guys are good," Lance heard Hunk say from the side.

"It can't be," Allura's distressed voice shocked the adult and teen away from their fighting.

"What is it?" Mustache asked.

With wide eyes, Allura read the panel. "We've been asleep for five thousand years." She looked down with reprisal in her eyes. "Ys and its surroundings cities were destroyed by that dragon!"

Dragon?

"Coran," Allura mourned to the other mermaid. "Father is gone. Our entire civilization... It must have been the Imoogi Empire," she said, hate in her eyes.

"Imoogi?" Lance frowned. They had gone extinct or into hiding (one could never tell with magical creatures) long ago. "But, if Ys was fighting the Imoogi, then why were we attacked by Galra?"

Shiro looked up at Lance with shocked eyes. "Galra," he repeated. "I remember now. I was a prisoner. Their king...Zarkon."

Pidge and Keith looked at Lance curiously before shaking their heads.

Lance simply shook.

Zarkon? The King of the Galra?

"But-but he was a scientist," he muttered to himself, grabbing his wet shirt to hold himself steady. "I thought they had been taken over by a dictator. I didn't think Zarkon," he'd gotten a little loud. Enough to attract Coran's attention.

"What are you muttering here, lad?"

"I—" Lance couldn't answer.

"These Galra," Allura said, "they could be related to the Imoogi somehow. Even if they aren't, the dolphins are meant to defend the world. They wouldn't be summoned for just any foe. The Galra must be dangerous."

Lance laughed coldly. "More than you know."

"It's true," Hunk added. "They were attacking us a while ago, but we think they want the dolphin for themselves."

"Yes," Shiro agreed. "It's Zarkon who wants the super weapon called Voltron."

"Then he must know that it can defeat him," Allura said. "And we must find it before he does."

So much for stealing a sub.

Chapter Text

1

"Princess, you must eat. It's been 5,000 years." Coran had moved over to princess Allura's side. A caring guardian already (or again, considering they'd only taken a 5000 year nap, not disappeared or anything).

"I'm not hungry..."

"Man," Lance said to the nearest fellow, who happened to be Keith. "5,000 years? That's like one thousand plus 5."

"That's times five," Keith corrected him. How obnoxious. Hunk would have laughed.

"Whatever, dropout." They glared at each other.

"I haven't eaten since breakfast," Hunk complained in front of a tray of weird green goo. "I'm starving."

"Yeah, but you've thrown up, like, five times," Pidge remarked.

"Hmm. Good point." Hunk smiled and dug into the green goo, shoving it into his mouth. Eugh. Fish food.

"I can't believe your civilization created such advanced technology 5,000 years ago," Shiro said to Coran. "It must have been an incredible place."

"Yes, it was," Coran was also in mourning of his lost home. "But now it is gone and we're the last Ysians alive."

Join the club, Lance frowned. At least they had each other. At least the ocean wasn't rejecting them whenever they swam.

His continued act of swimming was going to give him a harsh karma, he just knew it. It was never a good idea to mess with things like this.

Coran approached Allura, who threw herself into his chest and sobbed into his shoulder. Tired, bitter, Lance looked away and crossed his legs, letting the water take him where it would.

Allura's ears twitched a moment later, and she looked to the side. She swam to her chamber, and leaned down. "Looks like we're not the last after all," she smiled. Inside the chamber were four seahorses, waving (their entire bodies) back at her.

Toot toot, they went.

I didn't know seahorses made noises, Lance frowned.

But it seemed to comfort her. It was contagious. He almost smiled.

An alarm burst their short bubble of comfort. They all turned to see the screen had turned red. It displayed a Galra ship.

Scrying, Lance mused for a moment breaking away from his ambivalent mood.

"A battleship has set its trackers to us!" Coran exclaimed.

"How is this possible?"

"I'm not sure," Lance crossed his arm. Ha glared at Keith from the side, "but I bet it's Keith's fault."

"Say what you've gotta say to make yourself feel better," he retaliated. He continued, "after getting us stuck on the other side of a magic portal!"

Lance straightened and shoved his face forward, touching his forehead. "I'll stick you in a portal!"

"Stow it, cadets!" Shiro walked over and carefully pulled Lance back. The teen raised his hands, Come at me! "This is no time to place blame," he said, looking at Lance. He turned to Keith, "It's time to work as team." Switching to Coran, he asked, "How long before they arrive?"

"At their speed? Oh, well," he did the math on his fingers, "probably a couple of days."

"Good," Allura looked intent. "Let them come." On that, Lance could agree. He had this girl's back all the way. She went on, "By the time they get here, you five will have reformed Voltron, and together, we will destroy the empire the Galra have built with destruction."

She looked at all of them, taking them in.

Lance was permanently broken from his mood. I'm going to be a Paladin of Voltron, he thought. "Oh Poseidon," he said numbly.

Hunk burped. Hunk was also going to be a Paladin of Voltron. "Sorry! Food goo."

Oh, Poseidon.

"Princess, there are five of these dolphins. How are we going to find the rest?" Shiro asked.

"King Alfor connected the Dolphins to Allura's life force," Coran said. "She alone is key to figuring out their whereabouts."

...

Allura, the key, had placed herself in front of the panel again. He eyes were closed, and they could see her resonate witt he castleroom's surroundings. A soft beam of light rose around her. When she opened her eyes, it dispersed into the rest of the room, forming a map of the ocean.

"Whoa!"

"These are coordinates," Pidge focused on the scrying ports. "The Black Dolphin looks like it's in the same location as the Blue Dolphin."

"Aww," Coran cooed, "Look at your primitive synapses firing away in their little brain cage."

"Very observant," Allura praised him. "That is because the Black Dolphin is in the castle."

"Yes. In order to keep stray hands off Voltron, King Alfor locked it in the castle. Only the other four dolphins could release it. Say," Coran twirled his mustache pensively, continuing a line of thought, "what are you?"

"Huh?" Pidge gave him a strange look. "What do you mean? W-what do I look like to you?"

"My first thought was selkie," he informed him, "but the more I look at you all, the less selkie you seem. None of you carry your skin. This big fellow over here," he gestured to Hunk, "is much too big. Everyone else, far too small. Only the white haired man with the cool scar seems selkie to me," he said, eyes closed in confidence. "But, as I said, none of you carry a coat. Perhaps a form of wingless sirens? Nymphs?"

"What?" Lance shrieked. His crew stared at him, and he cleared his throat, blushing. "I mean...I...never mind." I don't even qualify as selkie in his eyes...

Hunk's stare didn't dissuade, even as Shiro walked forward to explain. "We are all humans."

"Humans!" It was Coran's turn to shriek. "In the undersea!? What? What are the dolphins thinking!"

"We cannot question the dolphin's judgement, Coran," Allura scolded him. "It is...strange that they are all humans, but even in a desperate situation, the dolphins will only choose a paladin they can accept. It is a mystical bond that cannot be forced. Their quintessence qualifies."

"Humans," Coran still mouthed desperately.

"Well," Lance said quietly, "actually—"

"What's a selkie, anyway," Pidge talked over him.

"Hmm? Well, tiny human number five," Coran renamed and answered Pidge at the same time, "A selkie looks a lot like a seal. Except they are not. Underneath their seal exterior, their skin, they look rather like yourselves."

Pidge hummed, a little bemused. Seal people?

Hunk choked on a stray piece of goo, and Pidge had no more time to think about selkies before he was forced to step in and slap Hunk's back.

"Selkies aren't all the same shape and size, you know," Lance grumbled. "Probably, I mean," he added when the mermaid gave him a peculiar look.

"Anyway," Allura reclaimed the conversation hurriedly, "the Black Dolphin is the decisive head of Voltron. It will take a pilot who is a born leader and in control at all times. Somebody whose men will follow without hesitation. That is why, Shiro, you will pilot the Black Dolphin.

"The Green Dolphin has an inquisitive personality, and needs a pilot of intellect and daring. Pidge, you will pilot the Green Dolphin." Pidge smiled at the view he got of his proclaimed dolphin.

"The Blue Lion—"

"Hold up, lemme guesss," Lance smirked at her. "Takes the most handsome slash best pilot of the bunch?" His eyes were nothing for her. Great. Still, she was a girl after his own heart (though not chasing it, sadly).

"The Yellow Dolphin," she continued pointedly, "is caring and kind. It's the pilot who puts the needs of others above his own," she gestured in Hunk's direction. "His heart must be mighty. As the leg of Voltron, you will lift the team up and hold them together."

Flustered, Hunk looked around for someone else to fill in his shoes. "Me?"

"The Red Dolphin is temperamental and the most difficult to master. It is faster and more agile than the others but also more unstable. Its pilot needs to be someone who relies more on instinct than skill alone."

That was an incredibly flattering description for a paladin, Lance thought. As the image of the Red Dolphin floated toward Keith, he also thought that it didn't suit the other boy at all.

A Paladin of Voltron, one story told, had been an abandoned selkie who refused to wear her skin in the presence of others. Mad at the unjust world, and with the instincts to fight, she had taken command of the Red Dolphin and joined her fellow paladins in battle. If Lance had had to choose, he would have probably wanted to man that one.

Maybe he was bitter. "What, this guy?" he taunted.

Allura ignored him. "Unfortunately, I cannot yet locate the Red Dolphin's coordinates. There must be something wrong with the castle. After fifty hundred years, there might be some maintance required."

"Do not worry!" Coran rose high to the ceiling, putting himself under a nonexistent spotlight. "They don't call me 'The Choran' for nothing!"

"What does that mean?" Pidge asked. Hunk shrugged.

Keith and Lance were giving Coran a disbelieving look when their tiny dolphin holograms started swimming away from them.

"Once all the dolphins are united, you will form Voltron," Allura explained as the dolphins rose to show the crew the image they had seen before entering the Blue Dolphin. "The most powerful warrior ever know, the Defender of the World."

The hologram posed and dissuaded behind her, clearing the room and leaving it brightely colored blue again. Again, Lance found himself staring at the legs.

"Awesome!" Hunk breathed. "Wait. Okay, we're going to be in there and dolphins on wheels. Got that part. How do dolphins turn into legs?" Exactly! "Is this going to be a long trip? I have to pee. Do mermaids pee?"

Shiro answered, "We don't have much time. Pidge and I will go after the Green Dolphin. Lance, you take Hunk and get the yellow one."

"It's like I'm a real paladin," Lance grinned.

"You are," Allura said, a confused look in her eyes, as if that had been obvious from the start. Had it been?

It struck Lance that...it might have been obvious, and he was, indeed, a Paladin of Voltron. As Shiro talked to Keith, Lance took a moment to freak out. Just a little. Internally.

"Keith, you stay here. If you locate that Red Dolphin, go get it."

"I'll get the castle defenses ready in the meantime," Allura said, though she was glancing at Lance with query in her eyes. Was he freaking out to strongly?

"I'll ready a pod so you can reach the Green Dolphin," Coran said.

2

There were deserts even in the undersea. Uninhabitable, of course, not dry.

The Yellow Dolphin was in one, of course.

"AAAAAAHHHHHH," Lance and Hunk screamed as an alarmed blared in the back of the Blue Dolphin's head. Lance paused momentarily to sneeze before taking another breath to finish his scream. When he was done, Lance had some trouble telling words from nouns for a moment.

"Oh no! No, no, no! Oh! Oh no!" Hunk was still screaming, but at least he had words to say. Behind them, two small Galra vessels were chasing them down. The dolphin twisted and turned in the water, avoiding very explosive shots.

"Why is there fire underwater?" Hunk sobbed. They were hit by one shot and the dolphin faltered, its heavy metal sinking without moving forward. "I thougt Coran said these places were peaceful."

"Yeah," Lance bit back his next yell. "Well, maybe peaceful means something else for mermaids!"

Hunk held on for dear life and groaned. The device (a special mirror) Coran had given him to locate the Yellow Dolphin turned on in his hands, showing him their location.

"According to this thing, we're right on top of the Yellow Dolphin. Right below there! Where they're minding for the ore," Hunk said, pointing to the screen on the left. "They don't even realize the dolphin's there. Or maybe they just got here and they're digging for it? Don't magic creature's have a better way to dig for things?" he asked Lance directly.

Lance glaced back, looking at him strangely. "Why should I know? Who cares! Just go get it! I'm dropping you."

"Me? Down there? No. No, no, no," Hunk smiled nervously. "You're joking right?"

"I'll cover you," Lance said in all seriousness. "Go get that snake, Hunk!"

"What if it doesn't work!? What if I can't get in it," Hunk fretted as Lance made his way as close to the vantage point as he could. "What if I start crying? Too late, I'm already crying!"

"Don't worry," Lance replied, sumoning the ejection button, "No one can tell when you cry underwater."

Hunk was plunged into the deep blue sea, and Lance turned quickly to face his enemy. Because Hunk was smart, he should have gone inside quickly to hide away from the fire. Lance had the feeling he lost some sort of points for this, but he focused on the attack instead.

It wasn't exactly an easy fight. At some point, Lance had to forego the stay away from them and shoot from a distance tactic because he was getting hit far more times than he was hitting. He shot forth at them, ready for melee.

When he got closer to them, the Galra ships were more like tiny crabs pelting the dolphin with rocks and seashells. It still hurt like hell, and they wouldn't. Go. Away.

He aimed to destroy, as if he were in a video game.

A big rocket shot out of a ship before he could destroy it, and it exploded at the entrance of the cave, where he had dropped his brother at.

"Hunk!" Lance yelled, incapacitated for a moment.

The cave entrance didn't even shatter on impact, but the sand around it covered whatever carnage there was behind it. Bubbles escaped the ground, floating to the nonexistent sky above.

My fault, he thought, eyes stinging. This time it's my fault.

He had less time to think about it. A blast from a ship hit his dolphin in the head and he had to force himself to evade it, swimming in the opposite direction.

"Hunk! Come on, please buddy," he begged. The dolphin's response to his sentiments was obvious. His speed slowed, his dodging was distracted by his calling.

He screamed when one shot finally forced them to stop. Another followed and the sank. "Oh, nonononono," he said to no one in particular. He was fairly alone right now. "Going down, going down!"

He tried forcing a stop, but instead crashed into a barren wall of rock. Unlike the first time he's crashed the dolphin into a rock wall, the stone didn't give under the force. Instead, the force hit Lance and Blue almost completely. They continued to scrape their way to the bottom of the wasteland.

At least Blue was awake now, but obviously failing under the turmolic pressure. Lance himself had passed out after a final hit.

Blaring alarms woke him up less than a moment later, the flashing red tellling him that Blue was not okay. He himself felt the tingles of failing mechanics in his body. Buzz, they went. Bzzt.

He looked up in time to see two turbos had been shot at them. He wasn't going to make it.

So much for saving the world, he thought, closing his eyes and facing away from his certain demise.

BLAM!

He heard the explosion more than felt it. As a matter of fact, Lance had barely felt anything. A quake in the water. A few rock debris fell on the Blue Dolphin, but they were fine—as fine as they could be after getting sunk.

He looked up to see a Yellow Dolphin, bulky and heroic, taking care of the job.

"Hunk!" Lance cried. "I-I thought you were dead! You jumped n front of those shots to save my life!"

"Actually," a screen popped up, displaying Hunk inside his dolphin, "I was trying to get out of the way. Thankfully, what this thing lacks in speed, it more than makes up for in armor! Man, can it take a beating! Oof," the background shook as he took another hit, and they looked to the side.

"We've got incoming!"

Allura appeared on their right. "Paladins, please hurry back. I cannot hold the portals for much longer."

"Of course, princess," Lance replied. "Let's get outta here, Hunk!"

They acted like nothing was wrong when they got back to the castle, but to Lance, it all felt wrong.

3

The Red Dolphin was on the Galra ship. The ship was very close to the Ysian castle, yes, but it was also an enemy ship. Which they would have to board to steal back the Red Dolphin.

"We'll show that shark-face who's boss," Lance growled. He repeated the words he'd once heard his uncle say, "Who the quiznak do they think they are!"

Coran covered his mouth, as if he'd been the one to curse. He started using the word first, though! Lance had barely remembered it after public school had thought him some words that were far more satisfying to yell.

"No need to panic," Shiro tried to dissuade the tension in the room.

"Not panic? The shark dude is driving his battleship toward us! We only have four dolphins—"

"Technically, only three working dolphins," Pidge corrected.

A little tired, Hunk said, "Right. Thank you, Pidge. Three working dolphins and a castle that's, like, 5,000 years old?"

"It's actually 5,300 years old," Coran interrupted. "See, it was built by my grandather—"

"This just keeps getting better," Hunk almost shrieked. "Thank you, Coran. See? It's the perfect time to be panicking!"

Allura indeed looked panicked, but she tried to remain calm despite herself. "Wait. This castle has a refractive barrier we can activate. It should buy us time while you obtain the Red Dolphin."

"My lady," Lance smirked, "You already activate my refractive ba—"

"Lance," Shiro berated. Whoops.

"It won't hold long against their weapons," Coran said. "Weaponry sure has advanced since we were last in war."

"Panic now?" Hunk suggested.

"No," said Shiro. "We just have to figure out our plan of action. And figure it out quickly," he added worriedly.

Lance looked at the Galra ship and then he looked at Hunk.

Hunk was family. As much as Lance had convinced himself that he didn't belong on land with the Garrett family, it didn't mean he didn't love all of them. Hunk especially. That boy had picked him up in his worst moments and even committed to do crimes with him (against his will, mostly, but commitment is commitment).

Hunk was the best brother Lance could have ever had, and he didn't even have to feel guilty about thinking that because neither of them had any other brother.

I want to beat them, he growled in his mind, the thought of siblings reminding him of his sisters. I want to beat them so badly, but...

Hunk is so much more important right now.

"I say we pop up another portal and live to fight another day," Lance said roughly. He forced himself to smile when Hunk joined him anxiously.

"I second that! Yes. We tried to find all the dolphins, right?" he tried to reason with the rest of the crew and the mermaids. "We gave them the ol' college try. Couldn't do it," he shrugged, "we only have three. We can't form Voltron. I guess we could form a snake." Now he turned to Lance for a discussion. "Or a worm? Worms like holes, right? And portals aren't that much different."

"Then it's settled," Lance made his way to the princess. "Princess Allura, you'll ride with me. One of you guys can take the old guy."

"We can't just abandon this turf," Pidge argued. "The Galra will just take over anything in and surrounding it before moving on to the next ocean! They won't stop until we stop them." He emphasized the last three words pointedly.

"Okay, if we run, then maybe Sendak will follow us and leave the city alone," Hunk said. "Like when we left Earth. We form that snake I was talking about and then," he hissed, "out of here!"

Lance hit his shoulder lightly and leaned in to whisper into his ear. Hunk lowered himself to listen and made a confused noise. "What sound do eels make?"

"Never mind," Lance waved him off. Not the issue. The real problem here was that Hunk's plan?

It was the worst escape plan Lance had ever heard. Kogane also seemed to think so.

"Sendak could destroy the turf and then come after us anyway," Keith uttered. "Staying is out only option."

"How about you shut your mouth, lipless," Lance leaned forward tauntingly. Behind him, Coran gasped at the term.

Huh, Lance thought, I guess there's always been sharks in the sea.

Lipless was a derogotory name for anyone related to sharks. A throwback to the times when it was thought to be a bad thing to be related to them. His uncle Lot had used the word quite a bit. It meant almost nothing to Lance, however. He didn't like Galra, the thought of playing war games with their children long ago still upset his stomach, but he disliked those kids as much as he disliked Kogane.

Probably a little less.

"What does that even mean?" Keith asked, insulted despite himself. "Are you even trying to make sense anymore?"

"What do you know, Mullet?" Lance half-yelled.

Keith also shot forward, unwilling to step down from a fight. "We're staying."

"Leaving," Lance said.

"Staying!" screamed Pidge, joining their fight in a high pitched voice.

"Eel!" Hunk took on his respective opponent, looking down at Pidge, unlike the red and blue paladins, who were quite literally butting heads.

"Guys, stop," Shiro ordered. They all stepped away from each other. No one was facing the other, but they glared from their peripheral vision. "Princess Allura, these are your dolphins. You've dealt with wars like this before. What do you think is the best course of action?"

Allura glanced at Lance momentarily, catching his attention. "I-I don't know," she stuttered. "But..." She looked like she wanted to ask him for advice. That would be a stupid move, even if she knew he was a selkie.

So why was she looking at him?

She knows, Lance realized. She definitely knows.

"Perhaps your father can help," Coran suggested, taking her attention off him.

How could she have known when Hunk had yet to figure it out!? Hunk was so smart, the clues were everywhere, and even Lance was keeping track of them!

Lance was going to tell them. He was. The opportunity had yet to present itself to him again, though. There was no use in not telling them he was a selkie, after all. Nothing would change. Heck, maybe Hunk would even remember the day he lost Lance's skin, officially giving Lance a date to mourn it.

Hunk...would probably feel terrible if he remembered the day he lost Lance's skin, shit.

Maybe Lance didn't want to tell them after all, he thought, grimacing. Why did he never think these things through!?

"My father?" Allura asked Coran. Lance was no longer paying attention.

He was too busy wondering how to keep a secret for the rest of his life.

Chapter Text

1

They were staying to fight. It was stupid, if you asked Lance. Hunk shouldn't have to stay. Hell, Pidge, Keith, and Shiro shouldn't have to stay, but at least they were happy to.

Of course, all they had to do while Hunk swam for his life and worked his genius on a foreign dolphin mecha while Lance distracted a bunch of warships was clear a little seaweed from the Green Dolphin's fins or laze around in the castle.

Allura's father was now a mirror, just like everything in the Castle of Dolphins. Seriously, the refraction barrier, the advanced scrying, and now this? Mermaid tech all came down to the use of reflective items, which made sense considering they lived underwater. However, Lance hadn't been aware a lost art of theirs had been keeping the conscience of kings inside mirrors.

That was what humans called a haunted mirror, now that he thought about it. Creepy.

Allura's father spoke of destiny in private, and then the princess talked the crew into it.

"Destiny, shmedstiny," Lance grumbled under his breath.

After Allura's less than stellar (in Lance's opinion) speech had convinced Hunk, his biggest concern was the paladin suit fitting him. Lance griped to himself, unsatisfied despite the fact it had been the dream of many selkie, Galra, and other children to be a Paladin of Voltron.

Like he was becoming.

"This is not as exciting as I thought it would be," he murmured.

Hunk's fault. No, it wasn't. He wouldn't say that.

"The bayard is the traditional weapon of the Paladins of Voltron," Princess Allura introduced them their weapons by the time they'd suited up. After looking at himself in one of the many mirrors around, Lance had given in to his excitement and forgotten how bitter he'd been about Allura's decision.

(No, he was still bitter, but he was also a paladin and technically this princess was now his princess. And Hunk's, so the Hamoan couldn't run away either! Ha!)

He jumped on his toes, going up in quick bursts and sinking slowly again and again. It visibly annoyed Keith, who was behind him, so he continued to do it even after getting tired.

"Each bayard takes a distinct shape for each paladin," she continued. The bayards made their way to their respective paladin.

Hunk's became a very heavy cannon.

Keith's a (lame) sword.

Lance's turned into an assault rifle. Sweet, guns for the win.

Pidge's turned into a...

"What is that?" Lance leaned into Pidge's weapon, not recognizing it as a weapon. It had sharp edges, but it was so small! Was Pidge the melee sort? "It's very cute," he teased him.

Pidge shoved the bayard into his torso lightly, and the green evil released a shock wave into him, causing him to tip over.

"Yeah," Pidge agreed smugly, the little monster, "it's pretty cute."

Shiro's bayard had been lost with the previous paladin.

"How are we going to find the dolphin? The base is pretty big," Keith asked Allura when she explained the details of their infiltration.

"It's not a matter of 'we,'" Pidge smiled at him, "It's a matter of you."

"Right," Hunk said excitably. "Once you get in, you'll be able to feel its presence and track it down."

"Yeah," Lance grinned at him. "You know how you felt that crazy energy while we were in the caverns?"

"You made fun of me for that," Keith reminded him flatly.

"And I'm proud of that," Lance's smug grin widened, "but it's exactly like that. Think of it as echolocation. Except you're not blind."

Allura warned Keith with a more serious tone, "Remember, the Red Dolphin is extremely temperamental. You have to earn its respect."

Keith nodded.

Shiro continued on to establish a plan.

...

"Hunk, you dismantle the cannon while I take these jerks surfing!"

They had already tipped the Galra off to the fact that they weren't really going to give them the dolphins. What kind of idiots would they be if they did that?

This obviously meant the chase was on, and it was Lance getting chased again. Of course, this time Hunk had a bulky yellow magic mecha dolphin to protect him, which made Lance feel better about turning away from him.

"Ten-four." OK.

If Hunk had to choose between going home and staying in the undersea right now, Lance had a feeling the entire team would be on the same page.

Hunk slammed himself into a wall. Great strategy, but to no avail.

"What the quiznak?" He complained. Ah, the word was taking quite nicely. "What is that? A force field?"

"That's what I'd call it," Lance said.

Dash, dash, dash. Dodge, dodge, dodge. Crash, crash, crash. Pow, pow, pow. More dashing. More dodging. More crashing. More powing. Repetitive, but somehow, it wasn't getting boring. Lance had missed swimming, but he didn't remember swimming feeling like this!

The black, red, and green paladins were inside, sneaking around. Red Dolphin was their priority, and that was all Lance had cared to hear about. He and Hunk had the really fun-dangerous job—distraction.

It was also a lot more fun than sneaking around. He found that funny, since undersea residents liked to pride themselves in their sneaky side. It was all such bunk, really. They just never went to the oversea, like selkies did. Selkies were the real pros at sneaking.

It was a good thing he was no longer selkie, then, because he was being the least sneaky one in the world right now, even crowing loudly inside his dolphin as Galras chased him.

"Whoa-ho-ho!" He almost jumped in his seat. "Yeah, buddy! This is way more fun without Hunk's barfing!"

Hunk slammed himself into the force field. Again. Luckily, Lance's confidence had built up to the extent that he felt like he could keep the ships distracted for weeks.

On the other side of the ship, Keith had been sucked into the abyss of the ocean, incapacitated by shock and a temporary whirlpool. Then the Red Dolphin saved him and everything was more well than it had been before.

Inside the ship were Pidge and Shiro, rescuing prisoners. Not according to plan, but not a bad turnout.

They didn't have their helmet mics on. They hadn't communicated the change in plans to Hunk or Lance.

Lance couldn't have known.

Hunk had given up on the stupid slamming technique and started using his dolphin's quintessence blasts to attack the force field. Good on him. It disintegrated much more easily than it would have if Hunk had continued to slam his dolphin into it for another five decapheebs.

Soon after, the Green Dolphin launched itself out of the ultra-whale-sized, shark-shaped vessel, its screen showing on Lance's left.

"You made it!"

"Kitty Rose has left the stage," Pidge responded. Shiro was behind him, but no Keith to be seen.

"Let's get the heck out of here!" Lance suggested, already guessing where Keith could be.

"Hope I stopped the cannon," Hunk admitted as his dolphin swam toward them. "I could barely make a dent in it."

"What'd I miss?" Keith's voice and screen showed on Lance's right.

"Ah, so he lives after all!" Keith sucked and all, but it was still a good feeling to see him piloting the Red Dolphin with a smile.

"It was a close call, but yeah," Keith sounded somewhat proud of himself.

Oh, quiznak it, Lance could let that go this time. He had, after all, gotten his dolphin.

2

Back in the Castle of Dolphins, Shiro finally got his own magical mechanical mammal. Lance could feel his relief, seeing his leader in the open for the first time in forever. Or maybe if was Blue's relief. Whatever the case, all the dolphins chortled loudly in response to the Black Dolphin's squeal. It was frankly a little adorable, but it made Lance feel empowered.

He could hear Allura and Coran cheer on another line. Then alarms and red lights flashed. Lance was starting to get tired of those alarms and red lights.

Can we get just twenty minutes to be happy?

Not under the sea, and certainly not with Galra forces biting at their ships were already sinking to the castle's depths, preparing for a clash with the paladins.

"Sendak is already entering the breathable atmosphere," Allura informed. "We need Voltron, now!"

The pseudo sunlight of the castle's atmosphere had been dulled down to a pink—the day had come and gone without him realizing, but Lance had no time to feel sleepy.

The dolphins lined up for battle, an extra barrier between the turf and the Galra. The refractive barrier stood out against the water despite blending into its colors. It was, after all, refracting the light.

A single blast was all it took to shake them. It encompassed the surrounding bubble the castle had built for itself, like a billion tinier but just as potent blasts rather than a single one.

"Man, those guys repair those things fast," Hunk noted under the pressure.

"The barrier gets weaker with every hit," Coran said from Allura's line. "Once the shield goes down, the castle will be defenseless!"

"I can give you cover with the castle defenses for a while," Allura said, "but you have to form Voltron now of we'll all be destroyed!"

Is there a course on how to do that? Lance wondered for a second.

Another shock wave hit them.

They all groaned under its force, but Shiro recovered first. "Listen up, Team Voltron! The only way to succeed is to give it all you've got! This looks bad, but you can do it! Are you with me?"

Sure, Lance felt he could follow this man over a cliff and still be fine. He nodded in silence.

"I'm nodding, is everyone else nodding?" Hunk asked in infinite confidence.

"Yes."

"Let's do this!" Shiro shot forward, and the rest followed.

Oh boy. "Yeah, but how?" Lance asked.

"Good question," he acknowledged. "Does anyone have any idea on how to form Voltron?"

"I don't see a 'combine into giant robot' button anywhere on my dashboard," Hunk told them.

That's because you can't read, Lance thought. Mostly, he had been flying on dolphin instinct, like his teammates. It really was the way to go, but the controls did have words on them. He looked, and, indeed, there wasn't a "combine into giant robot" button.

"Quiznak, you're right," Lance shrieked.

They continued to swim in line, leading the Galra in circles and barely avoiding their shots.

"This is insane!" Pidge sounded panicked. Lance felt panicked too. "Can't they just cease fire for one minute so we can figure this out? Is that too much to ask?" In his frustration, he did a little twirl to catch one of the ships in the dolphin's mouth before sending it crashing into another.

Rough.

Keith added, "We've gotta do something." The Red Dolphin stopped and faced the others, leaving the formation as well.

Hunk yelled, "Combine!" and slammed Yellow into Red.

"Hey!"

"Okay, that didn't work," Hunk sounded bemused.

"Crashing into things. Doesn't. Work!" Lance yelled into his helmet. "Stop trying!"

"Quickly, Paladins! Our energy levels are running low!"

"Maybe if we fly in formation, we'll just combine," Shiro said, but it sounded more like a question. "Up, on my cue! One, two, three, Voltron!"

For a second it really felt like it would work, but nothing happened. They simply went deeper and deeper into the sea. If they were in the oversea, they would have been close to the surface.

The undersea was much larger, however.

"Nothing's happening," Shiro said.

"No wait, I feel something!"

"Me too. Like, like, like we're all being pulled in the same direction!"

"Uh, guys?" Shiro shook them out of their excitement. "I think I know why. Look up!"

They were being pulled in by the Galra base.

"What the quiznak!"

Pidge yelled, "Sendak's ship is sucking us in like a maelstrom!"

Finally, a big word Lance could understand and they were going to die in less than a minute!

A final wave of shock at the castle brought the down the barrier surrounding it, leaving Coran and the princess incapacitated inside.

"Oh no," Shiro exclaimed.

Hunk screamed. "I don't care what you say, Shiro, I'm panicking now!"

"It can't end here," Pidge reasoned, but life wasn't like Lance's fairy tales. Of course humans couldn't form Voltron and win a fight against the Galra. The undersea had been conquered in seven years, and they had moved on to the oversea. They were too strong.

"This is it," he lamented to them.

"It's been an honor flying with you, boys," Keith said, and Lance could agree with him in their final moments. A moment of silence fell among them.

"No!" Shiro yelled. "We can do this! We have to believe in ourselves!" Lance lifted his head to look at the screen. "We can't give up. We are the ocean's only hope!" He had said he would follow this man into death. "Everyone is relying on us. We can't fail! We won't fail!

"If we work together, we'll win together!"

"Yeah!"

In one word, he could feel everyone's resolve. And he meant, everyone's. There was no mistaking it, because Lance had never felt so determined to beat the Galra back in his life. It was shared between them, and it was so strong among them.

The dolphins flew into formation. They closed in on themselves and expanded to connect to each other.

The stories had been wrong. Voltron didn't become a siren in times of battle.

It became a human.

He'd known. He'd know, he'd known, he'd know, but he'd refused to realize it until he had become a right leg! A leg!

"Legs," Lance breathed in a hitched voice.

"I can't believe it," Keith shouted.

"We formed Voltron," cheered Pidge.

"I'm a leg!" Hunk enthusiasm melted into theirs.

"How," Lance gasped again, shaking in his seat. They were humans! And Voltron was human shaped! "How are we doing this!?" He was a leg, by Aegir! Sirens don't have legs like this!

"I don't know," Shiro did not answer him, "but let's get that cannon!"

Maybe fairy tales do exist, after all, Lance thought numbly when they were back at the castle. After beating the Galra ships. They were back at the castle, safe. Nobody was even injured.

Allura had already thanked them, and they were discussing the situation.

"How did we do it?"

"I was just, like, screaming the whole time," Hunk offered as an explanation. "Maybe that did it."

"We looked like a human," Lance said, still stunned.

Pidge fixed his glasses, frowing. He was deep in thought, but out of his shock and awe. Shiro reached for his shoulder, already aware of his inner turmoil.

"We're not going to stop searching until we find your brother and father," he assured him. "And wherever they are, I know they'd be proud of you."

Pidge smiled at him gratefully.

Lance stared at the man and child before him. Pidge was looking for his family, too. He had felt it. It had seemed like a passing feeling while they were Voltron, a short moment of disappointment in their determined collective.

And it hadn't even been him.

Pidge was looking for his family, and he had never forgotten it. Yet here Lance was, playing hero. His family, whether it be his uncle, his parents and sisters, or his neighbors—he hadn't thought about them. Not even a little.

"We won the battle," Allura said, breaking him from his thoughts, "but that was only just begun."

You're wrong, Lance wanted to say. The war begun seven years ago. It took my family.

"I fear the dolphins will be in more danger as knowledge spreads of their reappearance," she continued.

"Good thing you paladins know what you're doing," Coran added, "because you're going to have to form Voltron again and again and again!"

"Totally," Hunk agreed, before leaning in in shocked realization. "Wait, what?"

"We barely survived forming Voltron one time!" Lance said, also disturbed.

"And it was only one ship," Coran said, stepping forward to enhance his words with a demonstration. "Wait unil you have to fight a whole fleet of them! It's not going to be easy, being Defendors of the World."

It was a unanimous agreement that "Defenders of the World" had a nice ring to it.

But to have these four teenagers and a rando guy (admittedly one epic rando guy) manning the ocean's greatest hero? Lance shook his head, accepting the facts with a little lament.

The Paladins of Voltron: four and a half humans.

What a day.

3

"Lance," Allura's voice called out to him as the newcomers were shown to their quarters.

Holy quiznak, Lance was going to be living like royalty. He was hungry, but that meant nothing to his limbs and eyes, all droopy and slow.

Coran was leading them around. Allura had tagged along despite the fact he'd insisted that she sleep now.

"We've slept for 5,000 years, Coran. I cannot bring myself to sleep so soon again, especially not before the paladins have rested."

"Yes, Princess?" Lance stayed behind. He had no query with sleeping. He liked sleep and hadn't had a 5,000 year nap to traumatize him from it. But this was a very pretty princess, straight out of a storybook (in more ways than one). He would lose sleep for her any day of the week.

Shiro and the others continued to drag their feet after Coran, who seemed a little too excited after the afternoon's battle. He chipped and chattered away like a squirrel. His words were starting to sound like squirrel sounds to the crew as well.

Lance smiled at Allura, indicating he was awake enough for her.

"You," she hesitated to speak, looking down. Resolved eyes then met Lance's. "You are not human."

Lance knew she knew, so it shouldn't have been as shocking to hear. Still, it broke him away from whatever droop he had developed. His eyes widened a bit more, his posture straightened. "I'm a little more human than most selkies are," he allowed, smiling sadly.

"So you are a selkie after all," she wondered, putting a hand on his forearm. "But your skin."

"Like I said," Lance highlighted a little forcefully, "a little more human than most."

"I am sorry," she whispered. "I thought selkies couldn't...come back without their seal skin," she mused, looking at him thoughtfully.

"The Red Paladin did, didn't she?" Lance tested. Allura didn't answer. He sighed and continued. "I wouldn't step foot into the ocean for seven years. I imagine the Red Paladin was kissed by a mermaid or something, but I came in with the Blue Dolphin."

A smile touched Allura's lips. "So you have returned home?"

"I..." Lance looked around him.

No, not quite. His home was among rocks, with his sisters, not in a castle like this. Home was welcoming. The ocean water was not. Not anymore. It didn't want him here, but he was going against it with ever move he made.

"My family lived all over the place. We visited the oversea so much, it was our home practically half the year."

"I see." She closed her eyes for a moment more, thinking. "Well, sir Lance, son of..."

She paused, and he filled in the gap automatically, "Maklain and Gama."

"Son of Maklain and Gama. I welcome you to the Court of Ys."

Lance grinned timidly, a flirty look in his eyes. "Oh? Why am I the only paladin to receive this special treatment? You wouldn't happen to be attracted to young selkie men such as myself—"

"Of course not," Allura waved him off. "I fear no one else on this ship but you and I can shape our quintessence to our desire, however."

Lance blinked. "Coran can't do magic?"

Allura nodded. "He is a great charmer, but his specialty lies in maintenance of the castle. He won't learn more than that for fear of forgetting what he knows."

Lance took a moment to think. "You're going to teach me magic? I haven't done it in so long!"

"Which means you are rusty," she frowned at him. "I never finished my own studies, so that might be problematic."

He grinned sheepishly. "I actually...never finished my studies either. I was too stubborn to, but also too young. My family wasn't into teaching children magic either."

She narrowed her eyes in confusion. "At what age did you begin?"

"I was five and being taught by a lunatic," he said as-a-matter-of-factly. "Besides, before I could continue, the Galra," he trailed off, sighing wistfully.

"The Galra," Allura gasped, shooting forward to grab one of his hands. "You were there when they began their attacks?"

"I was the only one who escaped," he said, a tear in his eyes. He looked down. Sure, you couldn't see tears in the ocean, but it was a little obvious when Lance started to cry, and he didn't want Allura to see. "My uncle, the lunatic I mentioned," he clarified, "left me on an island and Hunk's family adopted me."

"Adopted?" She asked, pretending not to see him cry.

"By their laws, we are brothers." He smiled a little to himself. "In heart we're brothers too. He is, in fact, the best brother I could have. Blood, land, and sea could not tear us apart."

He looked up again to give Allura his best smile, to show that he meant it. He loved Hunk, he was family.

"Brothers," she breathed. "A selkie and a human."

He had been confident in saying that, but grew hot under her stare, the sea water feeling colder around him. "I'm sure it's been done before. Selkies and humans have had children, right?" Lance half asked, half screamed, dragging his hand away from hers. (Selkie-human hybrids: webbed little mongrels who couldn't quite fit into either society. Poor fellows.)

"But a bond like this is unheard of," Allura told him. "At least not in my time." He flushed at the word "bond."

It had also been unheard of in his own time,and he suspected Allura's generation had interacted with humans much more than his parents' had.

"You don't have to sound so fairy tale princess-like," he squawked at her. "We're brothers, it's not that special!" Says the guy who had only just a moment ago challenged the world to separate him and Hunk. "His little cousins are super annoying," he added to make a point.

She giggled, but became serious after a moment. "Lance. You came back to the sea despite the hardships you've faced and have decided to stay."

"I have," he acknowledged. Hunk wasn't leaving, and even if he had, Lance would have planned to come back.

"You have been keeping this secret from your team? I don't think that's healthy for your relationships."

"We can't tell them!" Lance yelled. It was loud, and he winced at his voice. "Sorry. I just...I gave Hunk my skin when we met."

She gasped, connecting the dots. "He's the one who-"

"It's not his fault!" He interrupted before she could accuse his brother completely. "I was the one who gave it to him. I was my choice, and he only did what I was telling him to do." He looked her in the eyes seriously, putting emphasis on his words. "I don't want him to find out. He'd feel terrible if he knew he had taken my coat, even though I was the one who gave it to him."

"Truly a complex bond," Allura murmured to herself in all her fairy tale princess splendor.

He groaned. "Princess Allura, it has been very strange day," he confessed. "I never thought I would manage my way back into the ocean, much less the undersea. We also found all of Voltron again." He paused before informing her, "Back when I was a child, Voltron was only a fairy tale."

"A story?" Allura frowned at the thought.

"Exactly! I didn't even think the Castle of Dolphins was real, or that it was part of Ys. Today was like getting sucked into a whirlpool of mythos. Imagine the other paladins. They must feel the same, considering mermaids are also just fairy tales for them."

"How could we have been forgotten like this?" Allura exclaimed. Lance didn't know if she was mad because the world forgot Voltron, Ys, or the existence of mermaids. Maybe all three.

He leaned into her, just as outraged. "I know! The stories don't even get it right! Before today, I thought Voltron would be a siren with wings and bird feet and—I didn't think—" Lance fell back, letting the water take him, stunned again. "Legs!"

"Legs are very useful in battle," Allura told him knowledgeably. "Especially if one can already walk, swim, and fly."

"Voltron can fly?" He gaped. "But it doesn't have wings! And why would it need to fly anyway?"

She looked at him strangely. "Voltron is the defender of this world. Sirens live in the skies, as do many others. You did not seriously think our savior was bound to the sea, did you?"

He had, in fact.

"We protect..." His mouth flapped as he found his words. "That would mean we'd have to leave the undersea," he tested. She nodded. "I thought the sirens could defend themselves. I didn't even think sirens had enemies," he shook his head. "They sound terrifying. Who would want to fight them?"

"How old were you when you lost your skin?"

He blinked. "Ten decapheebs, thank you very much." It pretty kind of summed up to ten years. Although, now that Lance thought about it, his age was no longer entirely accurate. Ten decapheebs and seven years old, was he?

"Then you never had a real tutor?"

Lance gave the word a dirty look. Teachers sucked, school sucked, he was a little glad he had graduated high school and now no longer had to go to the Garrison.

He stuck out his tongue and said, "My parents were planning to keep me home-schooled," he made quotation marks with his fingers. "Home-schooled" really just meant he would learn as he traveled. "Sadly, I received a human public education instead."

Allura looked displeased. "You haven't had sufficient studies then. In any area. We have plenty of ways we could teach you in the castle, don't worry." His horror must've shown, because she gave him a sweet smile and said, "For now, we should head to bed. We can continue to discuss once we have both rested."

"Are you suggesting what I think you're suggest—"

Unamused, but too tired to glare at his licentious smirk, Allura turned around and walked away. "I'm sure you can find your chambers alone. I'll be heading to mine."

"Huh?!" Lance's smirk fell. "Wait, I don't know my way around!" She didn't stop to listen, and was already around the corner. "Man, rude," he said, scratching his head and looking around for a mall map.

"Number three?" Coran's voice caught his attention. Lance turned around with a shy grin.

"Coran! Coran, the castle's best charming man. Oh, Choran," he sang. "You wouldn't happen to know where my room is, would you?"

Coran looked adequately enthusiastic with the little rhyme, and nodded approvingly. "Of course," he winked, "I'm sure you'll find your room suitable to your every selkie need."

He knew too.

Lance thought about it. "That's a little specist, don't you think?" Coran looked confused. "I'm just like any human at this point." What would a selkie even need? Would he even like beds in his seal form? "Also, can you never call me selkie in front of my friends? Ever?"

"Most assuredly."

"Thank you, man. Lead away!"

Chapter Text

1

Lance's room wasn't like the barracks, which he'd expected it to be. There was a window, the biggest highlight. Outside he could see the atmospheric light was no longer a pink hue. It was the sort of blue that made the ocean light up rather than darken.

Gotta give it to those mermaids, they made beautiful scenery.

His bed was made fit for a king. He looked to the side and saw blue dolphin slippers.

Scratch that. This room was made for a paladin!

A king had been a paladin once.

Lance wandered his room for a bit. It wasn't small, and he had more space than items, making it all the bigger.

"Which part of this would suit my every selkie need?" he asked the solitary quarters. Coran had yawned a big (too big, probably fake) yawn and left him to do whatever it was he did before sleep.

For Lance, that usually entailed a regimen of self-care and listening to music. Maybe video games, depending on how far you wanted to take his night routine.

At the barracks, he'd just talk with Hunk until they both mumbled themselves out cold.

Sometimes he would walk around, looking for his coat.

A melancholy feeling settled in his bones. Lance looked at his feet and wiggles his toes, watching the blue light give shadows on the floor.

He was in the ocean. He had never found his skin.

When Keith had gotten kicked out of the Garrison, Lance’s “victory” had been lackluster and empty. What was the point of a rival if he wasn't going to stick around to get one-up? Lance could recall just how angry Kogane had been.

How could he celebrate that?

At least he could enjoy the expulsion more now that he knew what Keith had been angry about. He had also been stowing on his rage, building up his resolve to find the Kerberos or maybe get past the event of its disappearance. Now they had Shiro.

Good for Keith.

Lance was already staring out the window, at the bottom of the undersea. He used to look at beaches and sigh wistfully.

"Look at me now," he whispered to himself. “This should be a win.” It wasn’t another empty victory.

He hadn't stopped looking for his coat for seven years, resolved himself never to ask Hunk, yet always hoped to once again swim in the ocean.

Seven years.

Now he was back and it was a terrible victory. Somehow, Lance wished it were an empty one, because that would mean he was back in the water and had simply gotten too used to land to feel happy about it. He had hoped for that, in fact.

No. He still loved the ocean dearly.

"Sometimes, I wish I wasn't a selkie," he told the water surrounding him, glaring out the window at its shimmering beauty.

If he were a human, he wouldn't need the ocean so much. Humans didn't need anything but themselves. They were just so unique sometimes. It made Lance feel like another unique person when he was just like any other person.

Longing for the water, missing the ocean.

If Lance were human, all he would need was Hunk and his family and everything would be fine. The ocean wouldn't hate him for being a brave cowardly ten decapheeb old kid, he would be able to swim freely and leave the water without a care. That had been a mistake, not a bad deed, right?

He wasn't a bad person.

He was a heartbreaker, but he had never torn anybody's heart apart. Lance was a good person! A good boyfriend or a good hook-up. A good brother, a good son, even a good pilot despite what Keith or their teacher might say!

He didn't harm people, he was good.

Karma (which used to be so inconsequential) was not usually a tricky matter. Be good and the world will be good to you. Be bad and the world will pay it back.

One normally wouldn't notice it as they moved on with their lives until they started confessing their bad deeds, or until they laid down on their bed and started thinking about every wrong move they'd ever made.

Karma builds up. It gets heavier and heavier until the person is destroyed (whether from the inside or from some external force that thinks guilt is not enough), and that person can usually feel it happening.

They know they deserve it. The quintessence of every being is inherently, if ambiguously, moral. Morals depend on the person, but most people know better than to do certain things like lying or killing.

Selkies know better than to step back into the ocean without their coat.

Sure, good people are hurt, mostly by bad people, bad choices, or bad luck.

Bad people? Bad people get hurt.

Lance wasn't trying to be a bad person, he was trying to be happy. A life full of misery awaited him back on land, but as long as he was in the ocean every tic spent swimming was karma building up on him. Misery waiting to happen.

He could feel it marking him a heavy soul. An elephant to Ma'at's feather.

He had spent seven years searching for his skin. Managing to make his way back into the ocean should have been a happy occasion!

Lance dragged himself to his bed, waving his arms forward and kicking his legs back. If the roof collapsed on him now, he would know it was well deserved and fair, despite how unfair it was.

Lance felt the urge to whine like a child to whatever god had made that stupid rule.

He was sinking into his pillow heavily. Silence surrounding him.

As a selkie, the universe had given him only one job. Keep your skin safe. He managed to mess that up. Stupid stupid stupid.

I wonder if Pidge's headphones are too wet to function, he wondered. Possibly.

Outside, the ocean loomed. Lance frowned.

Poseidon and Aegir may be cursing him right now, but no godly wrath would make him step on land on a fruitless quest again.

Would swimming get easier with time? Like lying? Or would it get harder, like a soldier’s body count going up. How could he compare these things to swimming?

Considering the day's events, Lance already felt like a murderer — he was, wasn't he? Shit, add that to the list of sins. But if it didn't bother the others, why should it bother him? Maybe it even balanced out his karma, just a little, saving the world one galra ship at a time. He could hope...

Lance felt like a murderer now.

Spitefully, Lance closed his eyes and forced himself to sleep, ignoring the sins crawling on his back.

…

A fitful night's rest later and Lance was torn from dreams of drowning in the ocean and dying via shark jaws by Allura's hurried voice yelling at them to hurry! They were under attack.

He was rolling into his door in an instant, letting the small whirlpool he'd created crash his body against the metal. He tipped upside-down and kicked himself upright again, swinging the door open to watch Shiro swimming toward the bridge.

He stared at the figure. It looked more like he was hurling himself through the halls rather than swimming.

At the last moment, he grabbed his leader's foot and said, "Hey, can I hitch a ride?" With a crooked grin.

Though Shiro looked surprised—and Lance suspected he'd narrowly escaped getting a kick in the face—he continued his way, speaking as they went.

"There's an attack on the castle, Lance," he reminded him, "This is not the time for games."

Lance let go when they got to a corner and kicked himself off a wall, following closely behind Shiro.

"Sorry," he muttered. He was still groggy. An attack on the castle is a dangerous event, he thought to himself, but the words just wouldn't make sense for another dobash or two. His body was working on instinct, not skill.

Cool, gimme that Red Dolphin, he commanded, but nothing happened. Figures. He liked Blue anyway, whatever. Blue was his. Yep, Blue Paladin, passing through, he told Allura, who he nearly tumbled over.

"Lance," he heard Shiro's voice again. He flipped around to see his leader had already stopped.

"Oh," he said. He made his way back, now more awake. He glanced around, looking for alarms or signs of danger, but the alarms had stopped. "Uh, what's going on?"

Behind him, the others were gathering hurriedly. Shiro also looked around them. "I guess this isn't an actual attack?"

"It's a good thing it wasn't because it took you," Allura glanced at the other mermaid, "Coran?"

"North-west," Coran said. "Oh, sorry, this is a compass," he added sheepishly.

"However long it was, it was too long," Allura continued, walking forward. "You must always be ready to do battle. Look at you! Only Lance and Shiro are in uniform. No, Lance, you've forgotten your helmet."

Lance looked down at himself, realizing for the first time that he'd slept in his paladin outfit. "Ew," he frowned, cringing away from himself. How hygienic could that be? He didn’t feel dirty, but who knew. He’d never had to wear clothes underwater before.

"Where are everyone's bayards?"

Lance tried to remember, but it wasn't in his hand, so it was probably in his room.

"Coran and I have been up for hours getting the castle back in order."

Aha, so that yawn last night had definitely been fake!

"We had to run a test on the alarms and we decided to test you as well." Allura's face suddenly gave a new meaning to disappointed. "Guess which one failed?"

"Hey," Hunk yawned.

Lance had shared a room with Hunk for many years now. He was not a morning person. At least Lance would (usually) let the world wake him up one step at a time.

Hunk, on the other hand, tumbled out of his bed at the sound of the alarm clock if not for the fact his bed was big enough that it took him two rolls before falling off.

Actually, he still fell off his bed sometimes.

"You got to sleep for 5,000 years, man," Hunk continued. "Monday night, I was on Earth. Now I've ridden a magic dolphin through an alien ocean, fought some evil shark guy named Zarkon, and eaten goo in some weird castle.

"That's a lot to process in, um...I don't know. What day is today?" Hunk asked.

Wednesday, Lance translated whatever Coran said into a single word. He wasn’t sure what Coran said even translated to weekdays. His family had used human dates casually since they’d spent so much time in the oversea and on human shores.

"It's a lot to process."

"You must understand the stakes of our mission," Allura retaliated. "Over the last 7 years, signs of distress have been picked up by the castle from all over the undersea."

Lance's back stiffened.

"We have assumed Zarkon has conquered the entire ocean by now," she said, touching a panel and bringing out a map of the undersea. Most of it was red.

Red meant bad. Lance gasped, turning in place to pick out any blue civilization he could. It was a hard task.

"As far as we can see, the Galra empire seeks to take over the world. The next territory is one of three: the Higher Skies, Arcadia, or human territory. That is where you come from."

She brought out a map of each territory and pointed to a familiar world map.

The Undersea was too deep and too big to be mapped completely, but there was no mistake. It had been conquered.

Arcadia and the Higher Skies were still blue. The human map was unmarked by any significant light, but it also seemed to be in the clear.

"That's a whole third of the world," Pidge exclaimed.

"Why is the human world so small?" Hunk asked, scratching his head. “Way smaller than the before.”

"The ocean here, the undersea, seems deeper," Pidge said, leaning in and adjusting his glasses. "That could explain why we never reached the surface when we tried to form Voltron. We swam way more than 10 miles upward and didn’t scratch any visible surface. The real question here is why the map is so small."

"It looks pretty big to me," Keith responded, closing in on the map of the Undersea.

"No, Pidge is right," Coran popped up near him, raising a finger. "The Undersea is quite dangerous, you know? What this map is showing is only about two-fifths of it. The safest locations here are inside caves and on land. To go deeper into the Undersea would mean you'd have to swim higher and higher, and by then you'd probably reach leviathan territory."

Lance shuddered. Creepy. He'd never seen a leviathan up close.

Hopefully he’d never have to. If you get close enough to a leviathan for it to find and kill you, you were probably asking for it.

“You understand the risk your own territory is at, don’t you? Your ocean has already been touched by the Galra, it’s only a matter of time before the human mainland is also taken over.”

The red of the sea started to leak, spreading to the edges of the human land and inward. Lance looked for Hamoa on the map, seeing the red completely overtake it in almost no time at all.

It was so small. So easy to conquer.

He shuddered out a breath at the thought of Hunk’s family (his family) being reached.

“Oh no,” Hunk moaned, eyes on the same little island. His eyes wandered to the rest of the Undersea, at all the lost territory.

“Exactly. Our mission is to free all those terfs. Coran and I are getting the castle ready to leave Ys. During that time, you have to learn to form Voltron so we can begin fighting Zarkon.”

She was sounding less like a fairy tale princess and more like his uncle by the second.

Shiro accepted the princess’ tone like a soldier and spoke. “The princess is right. Let’s get to our lions and start training.”

“Wait,” Pidge exclaimed. “But I want to talk to the prisoners we rescued from the Galra ship.”

Prisoners, Lance thought, his eyes widening.

“Uh, negative, Number Five,” Coran intervened, bending down and measuring his with his arms. “I have ranked you by height, okay?”

Number Three, I get it, Lance thought back to the previous night.

Coran straightened his back again and resumed a formal tone. “The prisoners need to remain in the cryo-replenishers until tomorrow.”

“Cry. Oh. Replenishers,” Lance sounded out the word under his breath. Mermaid Tears. Of course. He was learning a lot of things recently.

“That’s right. Now get to you lions,” Allura commanded.

Lance felt much more awake after getting a good scolding by the fairy tale princess. He made a silly but confident hop to his dolphin’s bay, sinking faster than usual in the fast waters of the tube. He felt like a turtle navigating the sea.

A blue bayard looking vessel awaited him at the bottom. It drove him to Blue.

They were on faraway ocean when they realized that the Yellow Dolphin had never come out.

“Let’s wait here,” Shiro said, turning Black to face the castle.

Blue swayed from side to side for a while, but eventually, even Lance grew still. Hunk was taking a while.

“Should someone go in after him?” he asked.

Yellow came bursting out just then, Hunk’s apologies coming in through the shells inside Blue’s main bay. 

“Seriously though, can’t they park these things, like, a little closer to the bridge?” Hunk asked, gliding to Pidge’s side.

“Alright guys,” Shiro started. “Let’s just fly in tight formation until we’re totally in sync.”

Allura appeared on a side-panel. “Feel the bond with your dolphins and your fellow pilots until five become one unit and you form Voltron!”

2

They didn’t form Voltron.

They also got beat up by the Castle of Dolphins and Allura. Harsh.

Eventually the lights emitting from the castle’s cannons ran out and the team managed their way inside to rest and heal. Mostly bruised egos, but also plenty of bruises.

Shiro was still pumped for training. While he tended to his dolphin, he talked about the many other ways they could form Voltron. None of them sounded any better than the pyramid they’d formed a while ago, and Lance feared their leader was running out of ideas.

They hadn’t had any ideas to start with…

Horrified, Lance dragged Hunk and Pidge by the shoulders and into a resting area with comfortable sofas and absolutely nothing else.

Lance immediately hopped onto the couch and feigned dead, splaying himself out to take a nap. Hunk did the same next to his head, though he did manage to find a sitting position.

Pidge sat on the opposite end of Hunk as Keith came into the room, on his tip-toes.

Lance had no strength to fight him on this. He welcomed Keith into the resting/hiding area with metaphorical open arms. His own arms were too busy resting.

Sadly, Mr. and Mrs. Busybody (Coran following Allura close behind) walked into the room to hassle the recruits into more training. Shiro walked in, making the Busybody family a family of three adults harassing the teens.

Hunk groaned. “We’ve been training! When are we going back to Earth?”

“I’m not going back until I find my family,” Pidge claimed.

Ditto, Lance did not say. He did manage to sit himself up.

“Guys, there won’t be an Earth if we don’t figure out how to fight Zarkon,” said Shiro.

“Fight how?” Lance asked with a raised eyebrow. “We can’t even figure out how to form Voltron.”

“Well, I’m not surprised,” Coran said behind him. “You know, the original paladins fought hundreds of battles together, side by side! They were like a bunch of hydra heads linked to one body!”

Lance looked at his knees and breathed out a “Wow…” He gave a quick glance at his crew, “Yeah, that’s definitely not us,” and fell back to the couch.

“During the last attack, your survival instincts forced you to work as a team,” Coran continued, “but that will only get you so far. You’ll have to become a real team to have any chance of forming Voltron and then beating Zarkon next time. You should try working out on the training deck.”

Hunk raised a brow. “There’s a training deck?”

***

“Ahem,” Coran’s voice sounded through whatever loudspeaker the castle had.

Probably more shells. Maybe more mirrors. Scratch that probably both. Maybe it was magic, and Lance could later ask if Coran could teach him so he could annoy Hunk all day.

“Two, two, one, two. Okay, listen up, guys.“ Lance listened. “The Paladin code demands you put your team members’ safety above your own. A swarm of foes is about to attack.”

“Huh?”

“Foes?”

A swarm of foes indeed came out, all of them wearing identical helmets with large fin-like ears and holding identical staffs that glowed. They had scaled legs and tails. Their weak spots were highlighted by a smallish glowing circle. One on the head. One on the right side of their chest. One on each knee.

They moved expertly in the water, like an Olympic swimmer. They didn’t look like they belonged in the water, however. Weird.

The crew backed away, hesitant to attack.

“Don’t worry, they’re not real. They are rag dolls charmed to look and act like enemies.”

“Magic bots,” Hunk breathed next to Lance.

“Normally, they wouldn’t be able to use attack magic, but these dolls have been especially enchanted for these purposes.”

The staffs began to glow threateningly around them.

 “It’s up to each of you to do everything you can to protect the other members of your team.”

“Wait-wait-wait-wait, what’s going on?” Hunk asked. A shield appeared on his right arm. Not refractive, but reflective. “Whoa! Did you guys get one of these?”

The dolls marched around them at first, but quickly started running in circles, shots of light blasting at the paladins.

The shields, through much better for avoiding close shots than refractive barriers, had a recoil with each hit they took. Lance’s feet were already on the steady ground, but the impact still caused him to brace. 

Hunk ducked at the first shot. Behind him, Pidge yelped on impact and then fell through the floor. Not properly using his shield, Hunk was shot as well, and he dived into the floor after Pidge.

“Protect your teammates or no one will protect you!”

Lance glanced around him, nodding as Keith and Shiro kicked off the ground lightly and started to float backward, into the circle. He did the same, sinking to the floor when he felt Keith’s back on his.

“Time to increase intensity.”

They were never going to win this one.

As if the running before hadn’t been quick enough, the dolls seemed to go at even faster levels now. The shots were thrown at them harder. It was like a video game, and they’d reached the boss level.

Lance was great at video games.

“You keeping up over there, Keith?” Lance mocked, trying to maintain a pattern of blocking at his front. He felt confident enough to turn his head to look at Keith’s mullet.

“Just concentrate on keeping me safe,” Keith answered, looking forward.

Lance scoffed. “Me? I own this drill. You’re the one who needs to concentrate.” He glared until the dolls ducked simultaneously, crouching in a creepy posture and hissing. He was so stunned, he couldn’t turn back to block fast enough, and a shot went between his legs, hitting Keith.

Crap.

Lance scurried to cover Shiro but spread himself wide open in the process. A shot hit his back and he sank downward, screaming the entire time.

Shiro followed soon after.

Protect your team my butt, Lance thought in irritation, rubbing the spot where a beam had shot him. It wasn’t deadly, but it was cold and painful. This sucks.

***

“To form Voltron, you must trust in each other. This ancient paladin maze will teach you that trust. Your teammates can see the walls, but you cannot,” Coran warned Lance, who was stuck in the middle of said maze. “So listen carefully. If you touch the walls, you’ll get a slight shock. And I wouldn’t recommend swimming unless you think you can stop yourself in time.”

Well that’s a done deal, Lance thought, scuffling his feet on the ground a little. Walking in water was even getting easier, though not any faster.

He pulled his helmet on. He was the king of listening. Yep, he could do this. “Wait, who’s guiding me through?” He looked above toward Coran.

“Take two steps forward,” Keith’s voice rang in his ears.

“Oh, no. Not Keith. Why does he get to be the man on the mic?”

“Now just sit tight, you’ll get your turn.”

“Like I said. Take two steps forward, turn right, and take three steps that direction.”

Lance turned right and stepped one and one-half times before hitting a wall and receiving a shock. He shrieked and stepped back, turning to glare at Keith’s faraway silhouette.

“You did that on purpose!”

“You’re not listening.”

“You said ‘turn right’!”

“But before that, I said ‘take two steps forward.”

Lance grumbled before giving it another shot, placing hesitant trust in Keith’s commitment to training. He hit another wall and yelled, “We’re switching places, right now!”

***

“You’ll never be able to form Voltron,” said Coran through the dolphin’s link, “unless each of you has a strong bond with his dolphin.”

The dolphins were swimming in formation in high waters. Land was no longer visible from where they were.

Lance had made significant progress with his own dolphin as he’d entered the undersea with their help. He smiled at Blue, despite being inside their head. They got the message. Lance got a smile back. Yeah, they’ve got this.

“Everyone,” Coran exclaimed after a moment of silence, “put your dolphins into a nose dive! This is an expert-level drill that you really shouldn’t attempt until you’ve been piloting for years, but, uh, we’re in a bit of a rush, so here we go… Blinding, now.”

Lance couldn’t see. The paladins flustered and screamed as per uzhe.

“Coran! What’s going on? This is weird!”

“You must learn to see through your dolphin’s eyes,” Coran said in the dark. “The goal is to pull up right before you crash into the ground. Feel what the dolphin feels!”

“Mine feels scared!” Hunk whimpered. His dolphin pulled out and to the side, swimming safely again.

Blue was a lot calmer than Lance was, but it was contagious. As soon as he let himself, Lance breathed in the calm. Blue was safe. Blue brought him home — kind of. Blue let him choose between swimming in pain or staying with them. Blue was kind and warm. Blue was friendly.

The thoughts melted into him, and he sort of became the thoughts. Blue sort of became Lance, Lance sort of became Blue. It wasn’t the usual talking. Lance was the Blue Dolphin now. Warm and friendly and…

(He was swimming, by Aegir, he was swimming again, wasn’t he? And it didn’t feel wrong, it didn’t hurt. It felt like he was back again, for once. He was back. They were back, Blue felt it too.)

…fun. Lance grinned and abided to their wishes, pushing forward a lever. Blue sped up.

“Whooo!!!” He shouted, gaining his fellow paladin’s attention.

“You sound confident,” Keith’s voice shot through his helmet, but it couldn’t bother Lance in this mood. By Aegir, Blue liked Red’s paladin, that was annoyingly infectious too.

“Your dolphin’s got the better reflexes, Keith,” Lance grinned into his helmet. “Maybe you should have some fun with it too!”

“Huh?” Keith sounded a little confused at the genial advice, but as Blue left Red behind in the foam, he took Lance’s words as a challenge. “Oh yeah?”

It was more of a suggestion than a challenge, but whatever.

Lance thinks, as Keith quickly narrows the gap between their dolphins, the race would have been more mutual if Keith had a better connection with Red. Or if Lance had had a worse one with Blue, but that was hard to imagine under any circumstances.

“Cutting it close,” Lance laughed out loud, unable to enjoy himself in silence. This was too good. He couldn’t see the inside of Blue’s head, but he could see the oncoming seafloor, and he knew Blue could pull up in time.

He knew he could pull up in time. Decapheebs of playing chase with his sisters floated around Lance’s head.  

“Aren’t you?” Obviously, something about Lance agitated Keith. They were avoiding the stagnant seafloor. Much easier than a chase.

Man, he should lighten up, Lance thought. Blue gave him a kind yet unappreciated reminder that Keith’s agitation was his fault. For various reasons.

Short story short, Keith blasted Red into the sand. Blue pirouetted out of the way and swam casually around the dolphin, flipping in the water.

 “Good job, Lance!” Coran cheered.

Pidge also ditched last second, but Blue looked up to see Black and Shiro still diving to the ground at a sensible speed.

“Whoa, is Shiro doing it?” Lance asked.

Red struggled to pull their head out of the sand until Blue bumped their tail into them. They stumbled out and shook off the sand. Some landed on Blue, but Lance’s attention was on their line of sight. Shiro.

“How’d you do that?” Keith demanded.

“Uh,” Lance struggled to find an answer that wouldn’t automatically cause discourse or out him as a selkie. Keith wasn’t as annoying — still a little irritating, but it was manageable — when his brain was linked with Blue’s, but that didn’t mean he wanted to spill all his secrets now. “Look at Shiro!”

“I can’t see!”

Shit. “Well, he did it! He’s still swimming, dodging rocks and stuff!”

“I think I’m getting this,” Shiro mused.

“Excellent, Shiro!” Coran supported. “You and Lance got it in one!”

***

“Seriously, how’d you do it, Lance?” Hunk asked when Lance was out of Blue and hating Keith again. He stuck out his tongue at the Red Paladin before answering so that everyone could hear as he shrugged. “I’ve had my dolphin the longest.”

Keith raised a disbelieving brow. Hunk was about to respond doubtfully, but he was interrupted by their drill sergeant.

“Everyone,” Allura looked over them from their seated position. “We have a final trial. Seeing as Lance and Shiro were the only ones to pass the last training exercise, you’re going to need it.”

Ouch.

Her eyes landed on Lance. He jumped and cowered under her stare but drooped in confusion when her eyes softened into the same eyes she’d had the night before. She’d been an entirely different person today, but right now…

She closed her eyes and turned around.

“Lance, I would like to speak to you about a certain dent we found on the Blue Dolphin.”

“What? On Blue? Are you sure?”

Some sort of satisfaction emitted from Keith as the Blue Paladin stood up to follow Allura. He glared at him before following her out the room, bouncing over to her.

“Follow me,” Coran said behind him.

“What about Lance?” Shiro asked.

“Time waits for no myth!”

Lance paused, cocking his head. He scratched it and shot forward to follow Allura again.

At a corner, Allura turned around sharply, her tail narrowly avoiding Lance’s torso. He skidded to a stop, floating back a little. Allura grabbed his hand and pulled him in.

“Whoa, Princess! Is this really the time to—“

“The next exercise could expose your identity if you’re not careful,” Allura whispered.

Her eyes were too close to his, it took him a moment to understand. “Hold up, what?”

She explained to him the following exercise would connect the paladins’ minds, exposing them to each other.

“That sounds like a horrible idea,” Lance shook his head.

“It’s a wonderful idea for paladins to become a single unit,” the princess corrected. “I did promise I would keep your secret, however.”

She frowned downward, worry on her mind. Lance sighed, leaning into the wall and looking her up and down. Regal princess with droopy shoulders, didn’t fit her.

“I have kept this from Hunk for years without it ruining our friendship.”

“Your brotherhood.”

“Weird emphasis, but sure. I like Pidge, he’s real cute and he can actually talk to Hunk about things I don’t understand,” he continued. “Shiro is like the hero I never thought I’d get to meet. Those things have nothing to do with my being a selkie, so I don’t think it’ll ruin whatever good terms we’re on.”

Allura looked relieved for a second, but her eyes narrowed after a moment. “What about Keith?”

Lance groaned, leaning further into the wall and sinking a little. “Does mutual hate count?”

She gave him a highly unamused glare, waiting for a better response. He fought himself for a few moments before sharing, “Blue likes him.” Allura cocked her head. “I get the feeling Blue likes everybody, but I hate Keith and Blue likes Red’s paladin, so they kinda cancel out.”

Allura looked doubtful.

“Seriously, I actually felt like getting along with him when I linked with Blue. A little. Like,” Lance put his thumb and index finger together before separating them about a millimeter.

The princess sighed. “Alright. I’ll try not to worry about it too much but promise me to work on this with Keith.”

“Ugh.”

“Lance,” she warned.

“Fine! Fine, okay, yes. I’ll try to…bond with…Kogane…ugh.”

She sighed again but gave up on the topic. “Now, it’s not too hard to hide information from them during this exercise, so long as you know how to hide it well. They will know you’re hiding something if you’re too obvious. Especially if they’re looking for it.”

“I don’t care if they know I have something to hide, I just want to keep it to myself.”

Allura nodded understandingly. “It depends on your teammates if keeping a secret is feasible. They must trust you despite it, and you must trust them to keep away from it. This has been done before, but it never works for very long.” She looked at Lance with serious eyes. “Never. Paladins don’t keep secrets from each other.”

Lance had a feeling he was messing something up. Well, obviously, he was. He reached for the back of his neck and looked down. “Sorry.”

“It’s a special case,” Allura said kindly. “Now head to the training deck. Coran should have the others set up. They must be waiting for you.”

***

“We’re running a séance,” Lance said with raised brows and drooped eyes. “Unbelievable, we’re running a séance and all of you are just going with it?’ He looked at Hunk, who was seated next to the open space left for him. “You’re not scared a ghost will haunt us?”

They were seated in a circle, a single orb of light in the center of it. Lance’s mother used to make dull orbs as night lights for Ami when Lance told her bed time stories. Admittedly, Lance’s stories had too many leviathan encounters and not enough survivors.

On the other side of the empty space, Keith glared up at him and said, “We’re not summoning a ghost.” He looked forward again but added a tentative, “Are we?”

Hunk raised an arm and asked Shiro, “Um, if we’re summoning ghosts, can I ditch?”

“Do ghosts exist?” Pidge took out his diary from underneath him. Lance stared. Pidge noticed and asked, “What?”

“Have you been sitting on that all day?”

“Guys,” Shiro said, “let’s give Coran a chance to explain the training exercise before we start discussing the possibility of ghosts. Lance, take a seat.”

Lance sat hesitantly. He floated a little and barely managed to keep himself upright. Right, water. He had to find some way to weigh himself down. He adjusted himself until he sank to the floor.

“Have you guys noticed we don’t have, like, a fixed buoyancy?” He’d never noticed that before. Then again, he hadn’t cared about that sort of thing as a child.

“You just realized?” Pidge asked, flipping his diary a few pages back and pointing at some scribble Lance couldn’t read. Lance was starting to think Pidge’s diary was more of a logbook. “My computer still works here too. It’s like this water is just liquid air or something.”

“Or,” Hunk added, “We could be surrounded by a really really really really thin layer of dry air,” he almost clapped his hands together, assimilating the thinness. “Magic is weird.”

Pidge pointed at him with his pen, nodding in agreement and scratching something down. “I’m sure there’s some sort of explanation for it though. Something with numbers.” He muttered the last part, but they could all still hear it.

“Ah, Number Three, you’re here!” Coran entered the training room, carrying a prism in his hands. “Good, that means we can get started.” He handed Lance a piece of the prism revealing it to be five pieces of glass. “Careful not to cut yourself. We don't start blood magic until you've mastered the concept.”

It was transparent, and too thick to cut his hands, but Lance handled it with care nonetheless.

Each paladin received their own cut of square glass.

“What are we doing, exactly?” Shiro asked.

“We are conducting an ancient ritual! It’s usually reserved for wedding ceremonies or marriage counseling, but it is — or was — more famously known for its use in combat training. In order to help our soldiers focus on a single goal.”

“Weddings?” Hunk mouthed.

“Marriage counseling?” Pidge cocked his head.

“What do we need to do?” asked Shiro.

“It’s simple, really,” Coran’s posture reminded Lance of his high school biology teacher. “I’ll be teaching a bit of universal magic to each of you today.”

“Universal magic?” Pidge asked with narrowed eyes, taking his diary out again.

“Simple magic that can be used by all creatures, whether they be from the Higher Skies or Arcadia. One’s quintessence is taken into account when learning magic. For example,” behind him, Allura’s seahorses scooted a white board into view. “The quintessence from Arcadia normally means the beings there are rather good at fire, earth and-or wood spells.

“There’s always exceptions, such as the púca and the kappa. Elves are experts in alchemy, kappa are amazing medic; these professions are inherently universal of course, but not all exceptions prefer universal magic. Nymphs, especially Naiads, are Arcadian, but they use chaotic water magic.”

Lance stared at Pidges pencil, afraid his diary would catch on fire underwater.

“The undersea is special in that most species have a malleable quintessence. Us citizens of Ys hav—I mean, had many classes for respective quintessential magic. You should have seen it. All the classrooms with tutors from all around the world! Ys was the city of splendor and learning!”

Coran’s cheery aura reached levels of excitement one would usually find in baseball fans after their team scored a homerun. His shoulders wilted after a moment of heavy glory.

“That’s in the past now.” He capped his marker and the seahorses scooted the white board away with much effort. “Ahem, as interesting as this is, we’d best leave it for a later time. Today, we are conducting a mirror souls rite.”

“Mirror souls rite,” Pidge continued to write, nodding along.

“I have given each of you a window to your soul,” Coran said, still in teacher-mode. He walked to and fro as he spoke behind Shiro. “The glasses have been anointed in the necessary oils to mirror your quintessence.”

“But we’re humans,” Pidge said, holding his glass sideways to examine it. He sniffed it for the smell of oil Coran mentioned. “I thought we didn’t have quintessence.”

“You all have quintessence,” Coran explained. “It’s your bodies that can’t conduct magic. If you didn’t have quintessence, your dolphins would not have chosen you because you would not exist.”

“Right. Our quintessence matches our dolphins,” Pidge remembered.

“Human quintessence has always been more suited for universal magic,” Coran nodded, “but that doesn’t mean there’s a universal quintessence. You all happened to have a different sort of quintessence. It’s not an exceptionally rare sight, though it is unusual since those of the same kind tend to form regions of their own.”

“We didn’t all live next to the Garrison, we just studied there,” Keith nodded.

“Is that why Arcadia is more known for earth and fire?” Hunk asked, playing around with his glass.

“Exactly. Hunk, you would fit in right at home there, seeing as you command earth.”

“Whoa. I command earth,” Hunk seemed excited at the thought.

“Yes, but you can’t use magic, so you command an earth dolphin. Very ironic, really, earth and dolphin,” he fell into a murmur explaining the irony. “However, very durable and loyal. Pidge, wood.”

“Wood,” Pidge raised a brow.

“Yes. Like forest trees and flowers. Enrapturing. You do strike me as the elvish sort. A short one.”

“I command grass, awesome,” he intoned.

“It is indeed.” Coran nodded without detecting the sarcasm. “Keith, fire. Very interesting, that one. Air and fire tend to share territory, so it scatters around the world in small groups, like a bunch of lone wolves. Like lightning, a rather common phenomenon.”

Keith nodded, inspecting his glass calmly.

Lance scoffed and snickered, “Hot-head.” Keith threw him an annoyed look.

“Shiro, air,” Coran nodded at their leader. “Suited for the Higher skies, along with the sirens. Like I said, you mingle well with fire, but we’re far more likely to find a little itty bit of fire in an air society than air in a fire one.”

Keith and Shiro shared a glance and a smile.

Huh, Lance thought. Keith and Shiro probably knew each other well…Keith had been looking for Shiro since the failed Kerberos mission…

Feelings must be mutual, he thought, slouching and resting his chin on his hands pensively. Hm.

“Lance is obviously water,” Coran winked. “Right at home here in the undersea!”

Lance tried not to grimace at the obvious hint, failing spectacularly.

“Pfft,” Hunk covered his mouth with his hand, hardly hiding his snicker.

Lance sat straighter, raising a brow in his direction. “What’s funny about that?”

Pidge also seemed to get the joke. He scoffed and said with a small smile, “Oh, yeah, I forgot.”

“What?”

Keith didn’t seem to get it either for a second, until he asked, “Weren’t you afraid of water before you got your dolphin?”

Lance’s shoulders rose with his temper, and he leaned in to glower at Keith. “I was not afraid of water!”

“You did look a little scared when we fell in the water,” Shiro reminisced on last Tuesday. “You looked traumatized even,” he frowned.

Oh no, why were his eyes doing that soft thing?

Lance frowned at the soft-dad-eyes and exclaimed, “We fell through a hole into some water! After finding a glowing cave, of course I was traumatized!”

“He likes swimming in pools,” Hunk finally stopped snickering like a fool and talked. “it’s just the ocean he’s scared of.”

“Not scared,” Lance sang. “Look, I’m in it right now!” He lifted his arms and floated up a little at the force.

“Scared of the sea?” Coran looked a little too shocked. Lance was about to tell him to cut it out, but he did it by himself. He clapped his hands once as he said, “Doesn’t matter. Let’s start the ritual!”

The crew straightened themselves out, holding their respective window in front of them, facing the white orb. Coran slowly walked around them as he spoke.

“Normally, one would say this in the original language, but since none of you know a splotch of Arcadian, I’ll have to translate and hope for the best.

Lance knew some Arcadian, but Lance also hated Arcadian with a passion.

“We could just repeat it after you,” Pidge remarked. “Even if we don’t know the language.”

Coran shook his head. “That’s not how magic works. If you don’t know what you’re saying, all you’re doing is spouting phrases. That sort of thing only works with curses.”

“We have to understand it?”

“And you have to intend it! The right tools at hand, the right intent in mind, the right words on your tongue and you’re set to go! And that’s only when you’re touching the basics. Now let me recite the spell:

“The power of the moon and the elements of the world bestow my being with light. To mirror my soul, bear it carefully as I bear yours. Look carefully, as I view yours.”

“That’s a spell?” Hunk asked, wrinkling his nose in distaste. “Isn’t it supposed to rhyme or something? Does it rhyme in Arcadian?”

“No.”

***

As a child, all Lance had had to do to form a weak little light on his hand was sort of imagine a star and make a mantra of, “Nura, please.” After Coran’s explanation, he sort of gets where he went wrong.

Imagining a star and saying “light” was basically asking for night to come quicker, not for a bright orb like the one in front of him to appear on his hand. And he wasn’t supposed to be requesting a light. He was supposed to be narrating an event to come. Asking made the spell lose potential.

The more one knew about the spell’s outcome, the more likely their spell would work. Sorcerers were basically prophets of the immediate future. The lamest sort of prophecies, really — self-fulfilling ones.

He raised his left hand and almost said the magic words, but he pressed his lips together and looked at the already made orb instead. Humans couldn’t summon orbs without the correct tools. That’s why they had candles. And now electricity.

“Why bother with learning Arcadian then? Can’t we just say the spells in our first language and get the same results?” he asked, thinking back on the horrible days of learning and mis-learning ancient languages.

“It used to be common belief that using the original language gave the spell more power. Now we know that it was the belief in that belief that gave spells the spark they needed to work!”

“They tricked themselves into thinking magic was tied to language,” Pidge summarized.

“Exactly, Number Five. After that, the tradition just stuck,” Coran shrugged. “It never hurts to learn a little Arcadian. Many spell books are still written in it, as far as I know.”

I’m so done learning foreign languages forever, Lance thought.

“Do you think you could teach me Arcadian?” Pidge asked. He was insane.

***

“Now, the most important part of paladin training is being able to meld your minds and focus on one thing: Voltron.” Coran stepped away from the team until his back was against the wall. “Everything else has to fade away. This will be essential every time you form Voltron. So, relax and repeat the modified spell.”

“The power of the moon and the elements of the world bestow my being with light. To mirror my soul, bear it carefully as I bear yours. Look carefully, as I view yours.”

Their glasses, still in their hands, began to glow and form images. Lance couldn’t see it, but he could feel it.

“No walls, no secrets between paladins.”

Hunk…was hungry. Lance’s lips twitched upward, thoughts of sushi joining his own.

But if Hunk’s thoughts were joining with his…

Lance stopped the sushi where it was, lifting a metaphorical wall around a certain picture. There was no sushi underwater anyway, the rice would get soggy.

But Hunk wasn’t paying attention anyway. He welcomed Lance with open arms, they already knew everything about each other, he didn’t need to bother with Lance’s mind. Good to know he thought that.

It made Lance feel a guilty as he looked around.

The wall had to stay up. Lance tried to take a little time to shuffle around his fellows’ thoughts, turning in the other direction. Keith was thinking about home.

Lance wished he could do the same.

Shiro poked at the wall and Lance retreated into himself immediately, realizing the wall was incredibly weak. Every poke Shiro gave it was another brick Lance had to rebuild. It didn’t even seem like their leader was doing this on purpose, he was just passing through.

Hamoa, Hamoa, Hamoa, Hamoa, he chanted, forcing himself to think about Hunk’s cousins, and his parents, their neighbors, their peers.

“Come on everyone, clear everything. Now focus on forming your dolphin.”

Shiro moved on, but not without several glanced backward.

Black. Red. Yellow.

It was tough thinking about Blue when Lance was working so hard to keep the wall around his family.

“Bring your dolphins together and—and form Voltron!”

He couldn’t do this, he had to stop or the wall would crumble…

“Keep your minds open, work together. Good!” 

His glass became foggy and opaque as his thoughts led away from memories and away from his team. Pidge’s mind felt furthest of all, why was he so far away too?

“Focus! Only two to go, come on.”

“Pidge,” Keith spoke out loud, “Stop thinking of your girlfriend.”

“Lance?” Shiro mumbled, glancing at the paladin. Lance opened his eyes to find his glass had already cleared.

“I wasn’t! Hunk was rooting around in my head!”

“What?” Hunk jumped at his name. “I-I thought we were open,” he stuttered. “You can look in my head hole.”

“Everyone has to be able to look in everyone’s head holes. Clear your minds!”

Right, right, if everyone is focused on Voltron, no one should be focused on this perfectly breakable wall Lance built. The selkie glanced around him doubtfully but closed his eyes and focused.

On Blue.

No secrets to be seen here, no siree.

His glass was starting to shroud again…

Blue.

Yellow, Green, Black, Red, Blue.

Blue is a leg, no, the wall is weak. No wait, that girl in the picture is Pidge’s girlfriend. Pidge’s girlfriend, nothing else. The wall is going to break.

Joining. Forming…

 His wall was crumbling, Lance opened his eyes and let go of the glass.

“You’re both doing it!” Keith reproached.

The selkie swallowed nervously before shouting back. “It’s not my fault. Pidge kept thinking about his girlfriend and distracted me.”

“You’ve been distracted for longer than that,” Keith growled.

“Ugh,” Pidge also let go of his glass, throwing it far away from himself. “I’m done with this!”

“You were so into it when we started though,” Hunk said, looking swinging his head to look at his crewmates. Lance hadn’t thought he’d looked so focused on Coran’s teachings.

“I don’t like everyone grubbing around in my head!” Pidge scowled, standing up.

Lance nodded with his arms crossed. Hunk gave him a strange look he refused to notice.

“Oh, come on, guys,” Shiro pleaded. “We’re starting to get the hang of this.”

“I’m just…” Pidge looked for a quick lie, “I’m just tired, okay?”

Worst lie, really, but Shiro would have to believe him, especially now that their minds weren’t linked. Lance stood up and said, “Yeah, me too. We’ve been training nonstop all day.” Hopefully he was a better liar than Pidge.

He and the green paladin shared a look then looked down, slumping in on themselves.

“Okay,” Shiro allowed, glancing between the two tired teens. “Let’s take a break.”

Coran hummed before nodding. “You have been working hard,” he admitted. “Maybe it’s time to relax a little.” He clapped his hands twice, and the little seahorses came in, hauling a small cart without wheels along.

He grabbed a few bags filled with…more water…and beckoned the paladins to make themselves comfortable.

Lance frog leaped over Hunk and made himself comfortable, leaning on his figure to relax. Closer to Pidge, further from Keith. Good spot.

He looked Pidge in the eyes, and they nodded in secret camaraderie.

“Are you nodding off already, Lance?” Hunk asked, accepting a bag and a straw from Coran. He fumbled with what to do for a second but figured it out fast enough. The bag really did just have more water, but this, he could drink.

Hunk tried swallowing some of the surrounding water, but all he sucked in was too breathable and not cold or warm enough to tell if it was actually water or air.

“Pssht, me?” Lance asked, already drinking his own hydrogen dioxide. He glanced at Hunk with cocky eyes. “Not that tired, bro.”

“You have bags under your eyes,” his brother said, taking a poised sip.

“What?” Lance exclaimed, reaching for his fallen glass and trying to look for his reflection. “I do?” The glass did not reflect, for it was transparent. Why weren’t there mirrors in the training room? There were mirrors everywhere else!

Lance grumbled and leaned back against Hunk, bumping into him hard before relaxing again. “I just had a bad dream, shut up. You know, it’s rude to point it out.”

“Was the dream about the ocean? Because I have some news for you,” Hunk snickered into his straw when Lance elbowed him.

“You’re pushing it today, buddy.”

Pidge was also snorting in the sidelines. Lance had half a mind to kick him, but his legs were already extended as far as they would go, and kicking felt a little too much like swimming.

“That’s it, I’m leaving,” Lance said, and he started floating upward, still in resting position.

“What the—” Hunk turned and looked up. “Lance, what are you doing? Get back down here!”

Keith and Pidge spit out their water at the same time, and Pidge snorted as Lance made it half-way to the ceiling. Keith turned away, clearing away his own smile. Coran and Shiro stared fondly like they were watching their dogs playing at the park.

“What are you doing lying around?” Allura’s drill sergeant voice broke the peace, and Lance fell right into Hunk.

“Oof,” the brothers grunted. Hunk’s water bag was crumpled from the lack of liquid inside. The seahorses bumbled toward Allura with regal gallantry, surrounding her like they’d been there all along.

“You’re supposed to be training,” she continued.

“Just resting a bit,” Coran said less than confidently as Keith punctured his own bag and sipped. “You know, you can’t push too hard.”

“What do you mean, ‘can’t push too hard’? Get up, you lazy lumps! It’s time you faced the Gladiator!”

Lance huffed, still on top of Hunk. It was a hard to know how to feel about Princess Allura the more he got to know her. He had the feeling the other paladins were liking her less. So much for fairy tale princess…

3

The paladins spread out in what they assumed was a tactical formation for combat. Lance’s bayard was out, he was suddenly thirstier than he’d been when Coran had handed him a water bag, but his rifle was charged.

Around him, the other teens and Shiro looked around warily, expecting more scaly dolls to pop out of the walls. Even Hunk seemed laser-focused despite the confused state he’d been in all day.

For a moment, Lance wondered if he should ask Hunk if he felt alright. They hadn’t had much chance to talk in private all day. Off-putting. 

After training, Garrett, he told himself.

“In order to defeat the Gladiator, five paladins must fight as one.” Coran encouraged, back in his box, overseeing the paladins.

The first move was sudden. A hole opened in the ceiling and dropped a mermaid in. It attacked the closest target, Hunk. It swam toward him at a greater speed than Hunk could swim with his human legs and bulky weapon. 

Hunk yelled and started shooting at it chaotically. The Gladiator dodged every shot, though Keith had to block some with his shield. With its tail, the Gladiator swiped at Hunk’s legs. The human tilted and his back faced the floor as his limbs tried to avoid sinking completely. He sunk.

The doll had a staff which it used to slam Hunk in the stomach before turning to confront Pidge. The green paladin had backed himself into a wall. He kicked off and shot himself toward the Gladiator, bayard aimed toward it.

The doll easily circumvented him to the side and overpowered him.

Unable to block every blow from the staff, Pidge was flung backwards into Hunk. They both groaned on impact.

Lance growled and bounced toward them, shooting at the Gladiator’s back as he went. He didn’t miss, but the doll’s staff blocked every shot as it ran toward him. Lance moved around it to evade the staff, but it hit all it could. His rifle was thrown to the side.

Without an offence, Lance stuttered, but it didn’t matter because the blow to the head didn’t leave him much room to think. The Gladiator turned and attacked Keith, hit Lance on the same spot and then slammed the blue into red.

He landed next to Keith, but he must have fallen asleep because the next time he woke up, Keith was asking Shiro if he was okay.

They Gladiator was sinking to the floor, now just a cute mermaid doll, by the time he managed to hold himself up again.

Allura entered the training arena, condescension and entitlement in her step. “That combat simulator was set at a lever fit for child,” she reprimanded. “You’re not even close to working as a team, let alone ready to face Zarkon!”

Lance looked around him. Keith and Shiro were receiving the blunt of Allura’s scolding. Hunk and Pidge were still down for the count. His bayard was closer to Sergeant Allura than him. He gave up with a quiet groan and let his head fall to the floor with a soft thunk.

Wake me never, he didn’t say.

***

“Ahoy young paladins! I’ve whipped up a big batch of focusing food. After this meal, you’ll be forming Voltron six times a movement. And twice on the territorial confluence!”

Lance looked at the green goop. Fish food. Again. He wanted fish.

“Smells great, Coran,” Shiro smiled at the mermaid butler genially. “Thanks.”

Hunk was also smiling, genuine happiness at the sight of food. He wasn’t partial to meat, like Lance. He loved all food equally. Especially tasty food. Lance sighed and resigned himself to goop.

The crew grabbed their respective spork all at once. And all at once, Coran pulled out a button and pressed it.

Sticky lights formed bracelets around the paladin’s hands, and the bracelets stuck to the nearest bracelet.

They were shackled to each other.

One of Lance’s hands was stuck on Hunk’s, the other on Keith’s. The selkie stared at the one stuck on Keith’s hand in horror and exclaimed, “Hold the phone!”

“I saw a lot of solid individual performances today,” Coran explained, “but you’re still struggling to work as a team. So welcome to the final bonding exercise of the day.” He smirked.

Lance looked around, checking to see if anyone was on board with this. It was so unfair. Not even Shiro would take this, right? Would he?

Hunk tried to reach for his food, but Lance grunted when he was pulled to one side. He tried for the other, but Shiro’s arm didn’t budge. It was in that moment that Hunk understood this was not going to work.

“Coran,” he warned, “I want you to think about what you’re doing.”

“This one’s a classic,” the red-head remarked. “You get to feed each other like baby penguins!”

The teens groaned in complaint, looking at each other with common emotion. Even Shiro looked defeated, unwilling to accept this as a training exercise.

They still tried, though with heavy hearts. Lance refused to do anything for Keith, and mullet head accepted it. He tried to work with Pidge and they left their hands alone.

Hunk tried to use Lance’s arm again, and the selkie pulled back automatically.

“Ow!” He shouted.

“Sorry,” Lance huffed, allowing him to take his arm again. It almost seemed to work when Hunk and Lance managed a scoop, but as Hunk brought the spork to his mouth, Lance’s hand landed in his mouth beforehand. Hunk bit his finger.

“Hunk!” Lance complained, pulling back his hand. The forced made Hunk’s spork fling the goop to the other side of the table, where it landed on the floor.

Deciding to try again, Hunk dragged his arm again. He almost dragged all of Lance, in fact, so the selkie brought his other hand forward to avoid falling off his seat.

Keith’s hand landed on his plate of fish food.

Lance didn’t really want it, but he still jeered on the basis that it was Kogane’s hand.

“Oh, nice. You defiled my fish food!”

“It’s your fault!” Keith yelled. “This is ridiculous,” he referred to their shackles. Like Lance didn’t know.

Allura, who had been eating at the shorter edge of the table with disapproval written on her face for a while now, growled quietly and set down her spork. She looked at them with a tired demeanor. “Do humans ever stop complaining?” she asked.

“Can’t you just give us a break?” Shiro asked. “Everyone’ been working really hard today.” For once, it sounded like he was straining to keep the conversation friendly. Finally, their leader was talking back to the sergeant! Did that mean the teenager were also allowed to talk? Because Lance had a lot of questions.

“Yeah!” Keith stood up. “We’re not some prisoners for you to toy with like…like—”

“Like a bunch of toy prisoners!” Lance finished, raising his fist in the air. Their fists. In the water. Raising their fists in the water.

“Yes! Thank you, Lance.”

What were teammates for, if not to overthrow a sadistic princess (no matter how beautiful)?

“You do not yell at the Princess!” Coran yelled.

“Oh, the princess of what?” Pidge asked loudly. This entire conversation was rather loud. “We’re the only ones out here, and she’s no princess of ours!”

Green goop smashed directly into Pidge’s face. Lance turned in Allura’s direction to find still aiming her fork at his crewmate. Must have struck a nerve, he thought. Good.

“Go loose, Pidge!” Keith exclaimed, and he grabbed his own bowl. He threw it at the princess.

Allura gasped and covered herself with her arms, but the plate of food floated to her gently, even as Coran swam to slam it away. Coran’s quick movement caused the plate and food to float away.

So peaceful.

“Water physics,” Lance groaned. “They have magic.”

Coran seemed at a loss to do, but he spotted the spoonful of goop he had in his left hand and shrugged. The mischievous glint in his eye was the last thing they saw before the goop landed on all their faces.

Hunk shook the food from his face and gave the Ysian a resentful smile. “Oh, it’s on now.”

“We need to get closer,” Pidge declared.

“Everyone,” Shiro took command, “grab your plate.”

What followed was an onslaught of green goop and yelling from both humans and sea creatures. The shackled teammates threw themselves at the Ysians. Though they could swim away, the mermaids could not escape for long.

The yelling was soon replaced with laughter as the chase continued, and even when the fish food hit Keith’s head, Lance was more focused on landing a handful on Coran to laugh about it. It was Keith who helped him land the final blow.

When there was goop everywhere except the plates, Allura and Coran timed out with heavy breathes. Lance and the humans looked around themselves before bursting out into laughter. The mess hadn’t been restricted to them or the table. The entire room was covered in goop, either from crashes into the wall or missed throws from the mermaids.

“Enough!” Allura yelled, breaking them out of their amusement. “Do you see what you’re doing?”

They stared at her, ready for a lashing of a lifetime.

“You’re finally working together as one!” Allura grinned with pride, covered in goop. It took Lance a moment to blink away her smile.

“Hey,” Keith turned to Lance, “she’s right.”

Lance thought for a moment, wanting to contradict him, but, “I actually don’t hate you right now.”

They grinned at each other. Blue hadn’t even had to intervene. Hunk shoved himself into Lance, speaking to all three teens. “You guys thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Let’s go form Voltron!” Shiro finished.

“Yeah!”

“Actually, I was thinking dessert,” Hunk added, “but yeah! Let’s do it!”

He lifted his arms, dragging everyone else’s shackles along. They tipped over with him and dragged him backwards, causing all five of them to lose their footing.

“Can we get the shackles off first?”

***

“Everyone ready to do this?” Shiro asked.

“Roger that!” Pidge answered.

“It’s on,” Lance agreed.

“Yes, sir,” Keith answered.

“I was born ready!” Hunk exclaimed.

The Black dolphin let out a loud chortle, and Lance resonated with it just as Blue did. They all did.

“Then let’s go!” yelled Shiro.

“Yeah!”

What followed was a lot less harrowing than fighting sea creatures underwater. However, it had the same effect. They formed Voltron.

***

“Man, that was cool!” Lance exclaimed. “I’m so charged up, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to sleep tonight.” He dropped into the couch.

They were gathered in the same resting area they’d hidden in earlier in the day.

“Not me,” Keith said with a smile. “When my head hits the pillow, I’m going to be light. Out.”

“I just want you to know,” Hunk approached them with the same enthusiasm, sinking himself into the spot between them, “that I realized when we were in Voltron,” he hugged the other two into him, “we’re brothers man!”

Lance grinned, raising a brow.

“Like, we’re totally connected,” Hunk continued. “No secrets, no barriers, no nothing. Brother’s, all the way. I love you guys.” He looked like he was about to cry.

“G-forces mess with your head a little bit?” Keith asked, but there’s an easy smile on his lips.

“Yeah, maybe a little. I don’t know. It’s been a tough few days.”

Lance frowned. When Keith stood up and hopped off the couch, Lance bumped Hunk’s shoulder with his.

“I’m still your favorite brother though, right?”

“Pssht, duh.”

They grinned at each other. Lance said, “Hey, let’s have a sleepover.”

Hunk stared at him for a moment. “Lance, we live in the same castle.”

“But it’s been so long since we roomed together,” he whined.

“We were roommates at the Garrison!” Hunk exclaimed, but they burst out laughing soon enough. “Alright, but you should actually get to sleep. You’ve looked tired all day, I’m afraid you’re gonna collapse.”

“Me?” Lance scoffed. Hunk pushed him to the side lightly. Lance tipped over a little too quickly. “Hey!”

“See. Falling over already. Come on,” Hunk said in a motherly voice. “Let’s put you to bed.”

They entered Hunk’s room and the first thing Lance noticed was that it looked exactly like his room. But more yellow.

Lance made himself at home fast enough. He cannonballed into Hunk’s bed, messing up the already messy covers.  He rolled around until they’d fallen to the floor. Then he leaned over the edge to look under the bed.

“You’re already looking for my stuff?” Hunk chuckled when he noticed. “Good luck. We haven’t been here long enough. Besides, under the bed’s just lame.”

Lance stuck out his tongue at the empty space under the bed. “You hide things under your bed all the time.”

“Yeah, from myself. Outta sight, outta mind.” Hunk cannonballed into the bed too, throwing Lance upwards.

Lance turned over in the water, letting his head fall when his back landed on the bed. The door was upside down.

“These beds are big,” he said, suddenly sleepy.

Hunk hummed. “You going to sleep in the uniform?” he asked drowsily. He had changed into his own yellow pajamas.

“Oh, sweet, we get PJs?” Lance asked, lifting Hunk’s sleeve with a finger. Nice and silky.

Hunk blinked himself a little more awake. “Yeah, dude. We got a whole wardrobe, I thought you would’ve already looked through your closet.”

“Let me get a peek of yours.” Lance pushed himself to the other side of the room, opening a wardrobe closet excitedly.  Formal, casual, Hunk’s clothes, another formal outfit. It looked awesome, though most outfits lacked pants.

“We got dolphin slippers too,” Hunk added, watching Lance moon over his clothes. “I thought you checked your room out last night. Do you think you sleepwalked?”

Lance shrugged. “Maybe, I don’t know. Hey, you have another set of pajamas!” He wasted no time in changing. “Do you think mermaids have to shower?” he asked, putting on Hunk’s pants. He hadn’t before, but there was something less breathable about the waters his family had lived in.

“Don’t ask that while you put on my clothes!” Hunk groaned into his pillow. “Now all I’m going to think about is my dirty PJs because Lance wore them without showering.”

Lance threw one of his gloved at him. “You haven’t showered either!”

They bantered a while more before letting themselves fall asleep. It might have been a picture-perfect evening, but there was something missing that Lance would never quite recover.