Recovery
Chapter Five
The Hunkyard
A/N: Hello hello! Sorry this chapter took long to upload, life took a good swing at me and dealing with it was and still is my top priority. I'm still busy, so chapter uploads will be slow still but rest assured my passion for this project is still here! Thank you to FroofyB on FFN for pointing out a missing detail in a previous chapter, that got me to go back and edit most of them to fix any other issues! Happy reading, don't forget to R&R if you have the time <3
Hunk had a vision, and that vision comprised of the awesomest looking grill in all existence. One that was bigger than him, as loud as can be, and with enough flame decals on it to actually bring up the heat. Not to mention the cool lion hood ornament he found, he’d be insane not to use it on the grill of his dreams.
When he finished building it, he was nothing short of proud of what really could be his magnum opus of personal projects. Once he turned it on, it practically roared into life.
(yeah, adding that lion was the right choice), he thought,
Finally, the real test came. Would it grill? After working with grills for as long as Hunk had, and it was a long, long time, he knew it would. Until he placed the preordered, and gigantic, rack of ribs on the grill and watched it turn into ash right before his eyes.
“Uh, Pidge?” Hunk called in, “You gotta tell the cadets... the BBQ is off”
Pidge was sitting in castle control, watching the security cameras and fixing any bugs in the security system he found,
“Aw man, they’re not the only ones who’re gonna be bummed, y’know!” Pidge said disappointed, “Hey- I told you not to cook with jet fuel!”
“But you should see this gnarly grill, it’s-!”
“On our radars,” Pidge said, finishing Hunk’s sentence for him
While distracted, the grill had revved up again, and with nothing to burn, it shot up and went through the roof of the hangar instead. Pidge was too busy waiting to see how far up it’d go to notice the castle defenses activate and shoot it down until it was too late. He could only watch as it dropped back down the hole it made and right in front of Hunk in a heap of sadness and broken dreams.
Hunk had an expression on that looked as bad as the depressing pile in front of him. Pidge wouldn’t stand for one of his best friends to feel or look like that for long, and he knew just what to do to cheer him up,
“At least we know our... gristle defense systems are working~” he said playfully
Hunk didn’t stop himself from laughing at his pun, “Gristle defense, you always know how to cheer me up, little buddy!”
Immediately, Hunk had bounced back and wasted no time in playing air guitar with those two words as the only lyrics in his song. Pidge wasn’t about to let him go at it alone and jumped right in with him, both letting themselves get distracted as they had an intense air guitar performance.
As they rocked on, Pidge didn’t hear the door to the control room slide open, nor Anya’s voice calling out to him about the data from the Wade-droids they destroyed around two weeks. She stopped in her tracks when she saw them messing around from across the room, immediately getting second hand embarrassment. Anya brought up a holo-table and left the data pad on it, quietly leaving as she laughed at the mental image she wouldn’t get out of her head soon.
---
“Let’s just pound this robeast into dust and get this done with,” Hunk grumbled,
“Aw, is someone mad they didn’t get to have their barbecue?” Lance said, toying with him,
“Yeah, duh”
Keith laughed lightly, “Well, no one wants to see Hunk angry”
The team formed up and stood as Voltron against a robotic beast that was like them in height. It had claws for hands that vaguely looked like they belonged in claw machines, and the end of a blaster in the center of them. It didn’t waste a second in opening fire against the giant robot. They blocked as best as they could before rushing it themselves and giving it what for.
The team continued to fight as best they could without weapons and successfully knocked it down, but they knew better than to think their fight was done. The robeast stood up again and quit playing around, suddenly multiplying into three. Putting their arms up just in time, the identical robeasts opened fire once more, this time proving to be a lot for the defender of the universe.
“Cadets, come in!” called out Pidge, “What are Voltron’s power level readings??”
He waited a beat only to be met with silence. Confused and slightly distressed, he called out again,
“Hello?? Guys??”
---
Daniel scanned the rocky desert stretched before him, spotting movement just as he passed a rock formation. It was a small group of active wade-droids,
“There are some other ones!”
“I told you!” said Larmina, “I made way too many of those holes through them for any kind of power to boot them up!”
“Unless there’s some other source of power we don’t know about,” Vince said, “But you’re right, some ones we’ve seen shouldn’t even work in the first place!”
“So they’re like zom-bots then, huh,” Daniel wondered,
“guess that makes us zom-bot hunters,” Larmina said with an almost evil kind of excitement,
“What’s the score again?”
“All tied up”
Before Vince could protest or even ask them to wait for him, the two slid down the ledge as fast as they could, determined to one-up the other,
“Cadets! Where are you?” Allura asked, not even hiding her annoyance,
Vince was about to answer, after getting down the ledge, when Larmina brought out her spear and launched it at the Wade-droid nearest to Daniel,
“Cheater” he grumbled,
“Excuse me?” patched in Allura,
“Oh! Uh nothing!”
Allura struggled with the simulation robeast, “You’re supposed to be monitoring the battle from castle control!”
Larmina and Daniel fought the rest of the droids, missing one who went straight for Vince. Knowing his voltcom didn’t work, Larmina gave him a blaster, and he didn’t waste time in taking a few shots. Not that they did anything, even if this one acted a lot more sluggish with Vince than the others did with Larmina and Daniel. In a last ditch effort, Vince tried to activate his voltcom again, but unsurprisingly, it fries after the attempt. The Wade-bot saw Vince distracted with his device and swung, but before it could connect, Larmina impaled it with her spear.
“Watching is boring,” huffed Daniel as he walked over to Vince, “Besides, why do you need us? You’re the Voltron Force, you’ll beat it no matter what”
“And I’m tired of being near vehicles all the time,” Added Larmina while pulling out her spear, “I want to fight the good old-fashioned way, on the field!”
“I can’t believe you two!” said Allura,
“It’s not like this battle matters anyway, it’s a simulator for Arus’ sake”
Before Allura could say anything more, Voltron was overtaken by the robeasts and put out of commission. The team all hopped out of their lion sims, and Allura wasted no time in patching in again,
“Castle Control room. Now!”
---
Hunk watched the room as they split the cadets off to a specific pilot. Being the closest to the royals, he heard their argument first.
“If you want to fight with the Voltron Force, then you have to master every form of combat needed!” Allura sternly told Larmina,
“I wasn’t even fighting, aunt Allura, you just stationed me to watch a fake fight!”
He wanted to jump in, but before he could, Allura launched into a talk about Larmina’s royal lessons and how she’s already learned how important it was to observe the surrounding scene. Hunk had no idea how to follow up with that, so he walked closer to Keith, Lance, and Daniel.
“If you want to be a team player, you have to do what’s best for the team, not just run off because you think something is boring!” Keith told Daniel tiredly,
“The only reason I went out was because that was a fixed fight! You guys could’ve and would’ve defeated it if you actually brought out the blazing sword!” argued Daniel,
Now Hunk saw an opening,
“You’re right, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to learn. There’s a right time for everyone’s solo!” he said,
Instead of helping, it just made Daniel stick to his guns more, “See! Even Hunk agrees with me. There was no reason to just sit there and watch!”
That surprised Hunk, and he gave Keith and Lance a sheepish look,
“Thanks for tryin’ man, we’ve got it from here,” Lance said, “Daniel, I keep trying to make these training sessions fun for you-“
Hunk walked away before he could hear the end of Lance’s argument. This time, he turned to the people he felt like he could actually help with. Pidge was busy trying to counsel Vince, who wore the most anxious face Hunk had ever seen in a person,
“Vince, you can’t let them push you around like that. You’re here because your skills make you just as valuable as they are. You are part of this team, and you should shut them down if they try it again,” Pidge said sternly.
While trying to get it through his head, Pidge worked on Vince’s voltcom again. It gave Vince some room to breathe, as he didn’t have his personal hero staring him down. Hunk walked up to Pidge, who wordlessly let him have a crack at the shorting issues, as Vince started speaking again,
“I’m sorry... I’ll try to speak up more, but we saw something really weird out there!”
“Arus weird or dangerous weird?” asked Pidge as he watched Hunk work,
“Both I guess. I’ve only been here for a short time... anyway, there were Wade-droids were up and running, and with the damage some of them had, they shouldn’t have been!”
Hunk slipped up and shocked himself similar to the way the board game operator would, and that was the last straw for him. After Pidge made sure he was ok, Hunk looked back to Vince,
“It might just be weird stuff wade did in his design, kiddo,” He said,
Pidge agreed before launching into a rant about the data they have on the bots now. As he went on, he paid no mind to anything else. Hunk knew that once Pidge got started, it was hard to get him to stop, so he walked out the door instead. Unnoticed to him, both Allura and Pidge watched him leave before looking at each other and nodding in a silent agreement with an unspoken plan.
---
“I can’t believe Lance and Keith tried to talk to me about team work! Those two can’t have five minutes of peace without starting an argument between themselves!” groaned Daniel.
The cadets had walked back down into the catacombs and revisited the site of the close call bombing. Daniel took out his frustration by kicking rocks, literally by punting the ones he found along the way,
“At least you haven’t dealt with it before, my aunt keeps lecturing me for the same things, it’s so annoying,” said Larmina, “If she’s so hellbent on observation why doesn’t she observe that I don’t care!”
“I didn’t like being lectured by Pidge at all,” added Vince, “I felt like I disappointed him entirely for not doing what I was told...”
“Must be tough being the golden boy,” Daniel snarked,
“Jealousy doesn’t look good on you,” sassed Larmina,
“I’m not jealous, I-”
Before he finished his sentence, Daniel kicked another pebble and saw it bounce into a dark room he hadn’t seen the last time they came down there,
“What is that?” Vince asked, also seeing where the rock had disappeared too
“I don’t know,” Larmina answered awkwardly, “I’ve never seen that room before”
Daniel looked inside, “secret room, huh?”
He tried to go in deeper, but a beeping from all of their voltcoms stopped him in his tracks. It was their reminder for class. He and Larmina groaned, while Vince was only relieved he could finally get out of the catacombs that never stopped freaking him out.
“Rotten timing,” said Larmina, “Wanna come back down and explore it later?”
“Trust me, this room will be the only thing I’ll be thinking of during class,” Daniel responded.
---
Allura walked into the hangar, passing engineers greeted her as she followed the sound of a melancholy electric guitar. Soon enough she found Hunk, sitting on his amp, back to her, and playing the tune she kept hearing. Allura knocked on the steel beam closest to her,
“Hunk, is everything alright?”
“Yeah!” he said before strumming an even sadder tune, “No”
Hunk turned to face her, “It’s just that everyone seems to have bonded with at least one cadet except me,”
“What about Larmina?” asked Allura, “She latched onto you first when she was first living with us”
“Yeah, but being away from her for five years while she was still growin’ up means a world of differences, princess” He said, “You might not see it because you never left her side, but to the rest of us it’s as clear as day”
Allura paused. Had she really not realized how much Larmina changed between the boys’ absence from the castle? She drifted to thinking about how being away from Keith for so long had made him look different in her eyes, and she wasn’t about to let the rift between either person get any bigger.
“I think we can try to fix that!” Allura said excitedly, “Why don’t you try teaching their class for a day? If it works out, you can continue doing it!”
“Teach, huh?” Hunk thought about it and a smile grew on his face, “Yeah, I can do that!”
---
Allura walked in with Hunk and told the cadets he’d be taking over for the day. After she left, his start immediately took a nosedive off a cliff. The cadets would not stop arguing between each other, no matter how hard Hunk tried to get their attention.
“Vince, you’ve got this weird thing going on that basically keeps you stuck here if you want to figure out what it is, but how are Larmina and I going to fit into this puzzle?” Daniel said.
“Destiny is unfolding, Daniel! I still don’t know what’s going on with me and if that says anything, it’s that we need patience!” argued Vince,
“Guys?” said Hunk,
“Oh hi auntie Allura, glad to see you’re back” snarked Larmina, ignoring Hunk’s attempt for their attention,
He tried again, “Teamwork! Unity! Power of Lions!”
“Ok, just because you have auntie issues-” Vince said,
“Our only issue is that we aren’t being allowed to fly,” huffed Daniel, “There are five lions and eight pilots! Frankly, it’d be easier on all of us if we had our own vehicles”
Both Larmina and Vince looked unimpressed at his suggestion,
But Hunk knew what he could work with. It was high time too because he was tired of being ignored. He slammed his hand on the board behind him, catching all the cadets off guard and finally getting their attention,
“That’s enough complaining, cadets! We’re going on a field trip!”
---
Yellow lion landed in a clearing of the desert, close by to the castle of lions. The cadets saw heaps of scrap nearby piled almost as tall as skyscrapers left, right, and all over the place. It impressed Larmina, but the confusion still lingered over where they even were,
“I’ve lived here most of my life, but I don’t recognize this place at all! Where are we?”
“It’s a secret little place I call The Hunkyard!” Hunk said proudly,
“Cool!- Rad!-“ Vince and Daniel said simultaneously,
“And bonus points for the name sir,” saluted Daniel,
Hunk laughed, “I haven’t been here in ages. It’s my galactic scrap collection, gathered anything that was salvageable and put it right here!”
Larmina became less impressed and thought it was going to turn into an unnecessary history lesson, “So what are we doing here, in your yard... with your... junk”
Hunk didn’t take too kindly to his memories being insulted like that,
“You’re going to do what I used to when I was full of rage, make stuff and then break it!”
“Go on,” Daniel said curiously,
“Start looking for vehicle parts and call out to your inner demolition derby racer cadets! We’re gonna make some crush cars!” Hunk said excitedly.
Daniel and Vince whooped as they ran off, trying to find the pieces that spoke to them. Now Larmina really was uninterested, she didn’t care about piloting; she cared about combat,
“Whoopee, more vehicles...”
Yellow lion powered up again and went over to Daniel, who was frantically waving down Hunk. As he picked up a large wheel, he lightly laughed,
“Bonding”
Unbeknownst to them, something watched from afar. As it did, groups of its clones marched towards the site, wholly uninterested in the view ahead.
---
Pidge was still at castle control, working on the data Anya had only recently brought him. The work bored him and once he finally finished with the inputting said data; he waited for the castle defenses to recognize the wade-droids as a threat, and let out a sigh. Anya, having returned earlier to catch up on what she missed at the castle, gave him a questioning look when he turned to look at her.
“A lot of this is my work. There’s nothing interesting in here that I don’t already know about, and there’s not much I can tell the castle defense to scan for,” Pidge groaned,
“Honestly, even the little stuff like that could help,” Anya said, “Especially if Wade tries something stupid with his bots again”
He huffed, knowing she was right about Wade being slick, as much as he hated the fact that Wade could pull a fast one on them.
“It doesn’t make it any better that my work is being used against me though”
He got to work adding the little details of the wade-bots into the security system and remembering Anya’s habit of looking at even the slimmest of silver linings.
---
Daniel sped around on his newly build motorbike, thoroughly enjoying the adrenaline he was getting from the speed. Hunk watched him as Daniel took corners and felt out his new ride,
“Hey kid, are you sure that bike is really ready for action?” Hunk asked,
“Of course it is! Just watch!” Daniel responded smugly,
Hunk did as he was told and correctly expected something to go wrong. Daniel raced towards a ramp that was set up earlier and launched off it, unnoticed by him, the front wheel partially popped off of its axel. Hunk eyed the cadet with slight disappointment, knowing the only way he’d learn now was the hard way. He walked away towards Vince, who seemed to have some trouble with his own vehicle. Daniel sped up to catch up with him, but before he could, the wheel popped out entirely. As he crashed, Hunk and Vince had run over to him to help him out.
Daniel shook off the sand he had everywhere, “I’d uh, like to revise my answer”
Soon enough, Hunk and Daniel had put the wheel back on and began to properly tighten the bolt,
“Tightening this axel brings back memories of working in the crush car derby circuit,” said Hunk
“You were on the circuit?” asked Daniel excitedly,
“One of the best,” he pointed to a nearby crush car that looked to be in pristine condition, “with that beauty”
Daniel looked at it with awe. It was a brown 4-wheeler, fitted with an enormous hammer atop it, and detailed with yellow flames around the vehicle’s body. As he stared, movement caught his eye, but it hid too quickly for him to get a good look. Daniel brushed it off as the suns’ reflection and turned back to Hunk,
“I can’t believe you were really there! What was it like!”
“Most of my time there, I actually worked in the pits with my dad’s pit crew as a kid. We kept buildin’ and fixin’ so by the time I actually got behind the wheel, I knew the sport inside and out” Hunk reminisced, “I remember how much I just wanted to get out there on the get-go but if I did, I know I wouldn’t have respected what the crew had to say, and I would’ve been crushed flat for not listening to them”
Daniel had a soft smile on his face and held out his hand, “I see what you’re doing here”
“I’m... tightening your axel?”
“Yeah, just tightening the axel... thanks for putting everything into perspective, Hunk”
Hunk passed the wrench to Daniel and stood up, “uh... sure thing kiddo”
Though thoroughly confused about what the cadet had meant, Hunk was happy they had time to bond, especially after talking about one of his fondest memories growing up.
This time, Hunk went back to Vince,
“Hey Vince! How’s it goin’?”
“It’s not going more like it! I triple-checked everything to make sure it was all right, but it won’t work!” Vince ranted, “I don’t even know what could be going wrong at this point. It was working just fine earlier”
Hunk looked at Vince’s build. It was a mobile turret, and a big one at that, with caterpillar treads instead of wheels and his cockpit snugly sitting at the base of said turret. He took a closer look, inspecting the machinery through the treads, then spotted a good-sized rock lodged in the gears of the ride.
“Well, I think I found your problem, buddy!” Hunk looked at Vince confidently, “There’s a chunk of rock stuck in there that’s stopping anything from moving”
Vince looked confused, but still peered inside, immediately finding the problem and taking it out.
“There ya go Vince!” he told him proudly, “My hand is way too big for that space, but you did just fine yourself even though you needed a new perspective! Everyone needs a little help sometimes. You should be all set. I’ll rally you guys up soon to see the finished products”
Hunk walked away and as he did, Vince mulled over what he said before calling out to him,
“Thanks Hunk! I never would’ve thought of it like that!”
Hunk grinned, mentally checked off the second cadet on his list of bonding with. Then promptly steeled himself for the last and most challenging kid that was just straight ahead.
---
Still in the control room, Pidge and Anya idly chattered about whatever crossed their media feeds. Pidge had basically finished with the data he got and was waiting for the castle defenses to actually update with the new information. But it was taking too long for his liking, so he made a mental note to check the strength of the internet the main computer was connected to.
The door slid open, and Allura walked in, waving a hello to the pair,
“Things must be going well with Hunk and the cadets. They’ve been gone for hours, and it's already suns down! Do you know where they went?”
Without a thought, Pidge chuckled, “He probably took them to his happy place”
Before finishing his sentence, he gave the princess a wink. Tipping her off, she also laughed, remembering what he was eluding too,
“Oh yeah! The Hunkyard!”
Hearing the name aloud made them both laugh more. Confusing Anya, who was silently listening to their conversation. Though she still wore an amused expression, “The Hunkyard?”
“Yeah! It’s his galactic scrapyard that he tried to keep secret from the rest of us. Hunk ended up taking me there when I needed scrap for a personal project,” Pidge said proudly,
Allura was still giggling, “His collection got so big that it actually popped up on our sensors! Lance was so confused when he first saw it”
“And he hasn’t realized we can see it yet?” Anya asked,
“That’s what makes it funny!” responded Pidge, “He helped me build the damn thing, but it still slipped his mind that they would pick up a pile of scrap that huge!”
---
Hunk called out to Larmina, thinking that if he opened with something that lead to a conversation would make things easier on them both,
“Hey Larmina! You picked one of my favorite-“
He saw she wasn’t listening, instead she was blasting music through her earbuds and tried slamming the part Hunk was talking about into her vehicle. Hunk called out again,
“‘Mina? Larmina!!”
This time she heard him and turned his way, taking out her earbuds to actually listen to what he had to say,
“How’s it goin’ over here, spitfire?”
Unfazed by the affectionate nickname she used to be called, she let out a frustrated sigh,
“I want to be part of the Voltron Force, but only because I get to protect Arus. Why can’t I just fight without being in a stupid vehicle?”
“Because vehicles are rad!”
Larmina gave him an unimpressed look, and Hunk didn’t need to be told that his bonding mission wasn’t going according to plan. So he gave up on the indirect approach and decided being real with Larmina was the best course of action to take with her,
“Look, I brought you guys here because it means something special to me, so special that Pidge is the only other person to know about this place. I was hoping it’d mean something to you guys up more, so we could get along better.”
“And it does! It’s why I’m building anything in the first place. So can we please start breaking stuff? I’d like to get this over with!”
Hunk watched her strap herself in and noticed she was restless just sitting be in the seat. Larmina tried to slow her breathing as she got comfortable in the confined seat of her vehicle.
“Larmina, are you okay?” asked Hunk, genuinely worried about what he was seeing,
“Peachy actually!” She responded all too quickly, “Can we just get through this, please?”
She put her earbuds back in, still playing loud music, but Hunk refused to let her be. He took out one of her earbuds and listened to the song for a moment,
“Is this Sterolactic?”
Larmina looked at him curiously, “No. But they’re who inspired me when I wrote this”
“You wrote this?” he said, jamming out a bit, “Hey wanna hear something I wrote”
She started relaxing and nodded, excited about what she was about to hear. He brought up his voltcom and played his rock song on yellow lions speakers. Larmina laughed at seeing Yellow open her mouth wide and kept it like that, so the song could continue playing.
“So, are we bonding?” Hunk said as he played his air guitar,
Larmina gave him a big smile as she played air drums to his rhythm, “Yes, I believe we are”
---
Daniel and Vince did as many tricks as they could in their vehicles as they waited for Hunk and Larmina to show up. Eventually, the two irritated each other to help the time pass,
“Are you ready to get smoked?” taunted Daniel,
“Well, I don’t see any offensive capabilities on you, so I’m going to make you eat those words,” responded Vince, pulling up in front of Daniel with his turret pointed straight at him, “and you’re not fast enough to outrun my turret”
“Trust me, I’m way faster”
“Oh please, neither of you have enough speed to get out of being my victims,” called out Larmina.
The boys looked to their side and saw Larmina coming in what seemed to look like the endoskeleton of a four-legged animatronic that was repurposed for a rundown amusement park ride.
“What is that?” asked Daniel with morbid curiosity, though he didn’t hide the slight tone of disgust in his voice as he looked at it,
“Hunk noticed the confinement of the cockpit made me hate being in vehicles so much, so he solved that with a few alterations” Larmina showed off a few fighting moves in the pit, “free... range... of… motion!”
The skeleton moved with her as she did, telling the boys that they were in for a lot more trouble with her than they initially thought they’d be. Finally calling in, Hunk yelled at the cadets for start time,
“Alright, cadets, hand over your voltcoms! This is gonna be a friendly match of destroy-or-be-destroyed!” he said dramatically, “And the only rules are... that there are no rules!”
Both boys looked at Larmina, to which she only blew a raspberry back to them. After turning in their voltcom, they geared up to speed off before hearing Hunk out one final time.
“Except! Don’t kill each other!” Hunk added seriously,
The teens took that as their flag wave and immediately ran into the maze of the Hunkyard, taunting each other the entire time they were still in Hunk’s sight. When they finally left, Hunk ran into his own ride, yellow lion.
Daniel and Larmina raced each other down a straight in the dirt road,
“So, how are we going to score this game?” yelled Daniel,
“easy!” Larmina said confidently, “Me, one, you zero”
Immediately after that, the two had run off a small ledge, giving Larmina just enough airtime to knock into Daniel and send him farther off to the side. Not letting himself get taken out so easily, he immediately got in close to her again. Suddenly, they heard a crash in front of them. The two turned, only to see Vince flying out of the debris he bulldozed through, and he intended to smack straight into them. Quickly, Larmina and Daniel split apart as Vince rushed through, only for him to catch a drift and turn right back around to chase them once again.
---
As Hunk activated yellow, he couldn’t help but speak to her,
“With those kids out there, I hope you’re up for some serious refereeing, old yellow. We’re gonna have our paws full”
She roared in agreement, making Hunk feel giddy that his lion understood him so well,
“Atta girl!”
Soon they ran off looking for the cadets in question, into the same maze that only Hunk had a deep understanding of. Until Hunk realized yellow had rapidly started acting sluggishly to his controls, and eventually almost tripping over herself,
“Is it because I called you old?” questioned Hunk in a comedic tone that wasn’t able to hide his worry,
Hunk tried the controls again, only for yellow to still respond late to anything he did. Soon she called it quits and rested on the ground. Now Hunk was really worried. He had no idea what was happening, and he couldn’t remember anything that even affected a lion like that at all. As he tries to figure the problem out, yellow softly roars, giving him at least a partial answer to his earlier question.
Having bonded with the lions so closely, there were times the pilots could understand their roars, both as a language and as general feelings. Upon hearing yellow’s meek call, Hunk immediately looked outside to see just what she wanted his attention for. Wade-bots clamored over her, grasping anything they could to climb up to Hunk, and he was very unhappy to see them again.
“This is so going to put a cramp in cadet bonding day,” he said,
As he climbed out of the hatch on the very top of his lion’s head, he remembered Vince’s comment about the weird droids the three had seen. Now he knows just how right the kid was in worrying about it. At the top, he watched how the busted droids struggled to reach him for a little longer. His war hammer had formed, and he gave the droids what they wanted, a very angry lion pilot.
---
Larmina sneaked around piles of scrap, trying to find a good spot to peek at the boys ahead. When she did, she saw Daniel running circles around Vince, and Vince locked onto Daniel from the turret,
“What’s wrong? Can’t shoot me ‘cause I’m too fast?” taunted Daniel,
Larmina was just about to surprise attack that both, but movement behind the two caught her attention. A wave of the droids the three had seen earlier had come flooding in, and raced to the still distracted boys.
“Guys, look out!” she yelled,
Being distracted by her, Daniel swerved into the wave of bots and knocked a few of them over. Once he got control again, he sped out of their reach and back to Vince and Larmina, who already paired together to assess the situation.
“Man, you said there’d be more of these, but I had no idea!” Daniel said,
“Trust me, neither did I,” grumbled Larmina,
“I thought it’d only be a few online ones after being destroyed like they were, but that’s like an ocean of them... This is so not awesome,” worried Vince, “Any suggestions here?!”
“Do the only thing we can do, let’s kick some-!”
“Bot!” yelled Hunk,
As he finished Daniel’s sentence, Hunk had come racing down the nearby dune and crushed an unfortunate bot under him as he jumped off it. Instead of being in yellow lion, Hunk rode his crush-car, and in the years between last driving it, it didn’t affect in the slightest.
Larmina whooped, “He totally stepped on your lawn!”
Daniel and Vince shared a questioning glance, wondering where she had picked up that kind of slang. Hunk continued crushing any droid he could, showing off what a properly built crush-car was capable of,
“Hunk, did you call this attack back in to the castle?” yelled Vince,
“Call this in? No way!” he said, “This is our day to bond, and you built things made for crushin’!”
Hunk crushed bot after bot, whooping and hyping himself up the entire time. The cadets felt part of their worry dissipate as they watched him have the time of his life,
“He’s lost it” said Vince,
Daniel laughed as the show went on, “He’s nuts!”
“He’s so rad!” yelled Larmina excitedly.
---
Allura had stayed with Pidge and Anya in castle control, enjoying some of her own bonding time with the two of them. While she had Anya by her side for a long time, it had been an equally long one since she’d talked with Pidge like she was.
Allura checked the time, and her surprise at how fast it’d gone by immediately turned into worry,
“It’s getting late. Shouldn’t they be back by now?”
Pidge sat next to her and pulled up yellow lion’s signal,
“Well, yellow is still at the Hunkyard. We both know they’d all get along well, so they probably just lost track of time.”
Allura nodded, still worried especially for her niece, but knew she needed to be more patient. Pidge leaned on her, comforting her as he continued the conversation she had been so invested in earlier.
---
Daniel whooped as loud as he could as he ran over every droid in his path. Hunk was right, breaking stuff was so much fun. As he rode into a patch clear of wade-bots, Vince called out to him from afar,
“Daniel, you’ve got five more comin’ on your left!”
He shot a few rounds at them,
“Make that three!”
“On it,” replied Daniel,
He rode in towards them, making sure they focused solely on him, before heading straight for Larmina,
“You’re up!” he yelled,
Larmina got into a fighting stance, “Time to see if Hunk’s building skills can keep up with my fighting skills!”
Once the droids got close enough, Larmina swung at them, taking them down and even a few others that were further back with the blaster attached to her vehicle,
“Nice!” said Hunk
He drove past Larmina, the two high-fiving with parts of their respective vehicles. Vince launched himself off a small dune and crushed a bot under his turret before continuing his warpath,
“This feels just like a video game!”
Daniel grunted, “You mean because no matter how many we take down, it’s like we’re not even making a dent in their numbers??”
Vince didn’t answer, too busy trying to not get caught by any of the bots. But as he ran over another one, he looked back only to see it crackling with a strange purple energy and immediately power back on. While it couldn’t walk anymore, it dragged itself along with the only arm that worked.
“Uhhh, maybe we should head back to the lion,” Vince said nervously, watching the droid slowly crawl its way towards him,
“Are you kidding?? We’re just getting started!” Hunk told him,
Apparently, the Wade-droids thought so too and immediately jumped on Daniel the second they had the chance. He struggled to get back control, but as his bike went insane; he realized it was running on its own, and surging with a purple energy that made Daniel feel all kinds of bad.
“I’ve lost control!” He shouted, “I think the droids are powering it somehow!”
Vince didn’t consider himself a brave kid, but he wouldn’t let his new best friend get dragged around like that. So he did the only thing he knew would help again those bots, he T-boned the bike hard, crushing one bot and throwing the other off entirely. Daniel recovered from the whiplash and thanked him, but as they tried to split, the rides wouldn’t pull away from each other,
“Oh man, we’re stuck!” shouted Vince,
The two struggled as an entire mob of wade-droids headed for them, both boys getting more desperate to get separated the closer their enemies came. Larmina broke through the aggressive crowd and immediately got to work on helping them break apart. When they finally did, all three of them watched each other’s back and made a beeline to a less infested area.
The scene impressed Hunk. It hadn’t been too long since the three of them met, and they already fiercely protected each other in a tough situation. However, he focused on the bots pulling back, and when he saw where they headed, he realized they weren’t retreating at all. Instead, they began melding together, piece by piece, bot by bot. Every single droid only added to a much bigger amalgamation of itself.
“That’s so no good” Hunk’s mind raced, but he knew the one thing he had to do first, “cadets! It’s time to get back to the yella’ fella!”
---
At last, everything had finally gotten up to date. It still annoyed Pidge with how slowly it had gone, but it was done and that’s what mattered. Allura had left and gave Anya more direction on some of her work, so she had stayed with him in the meantime. He went through his mental checklist, making sure absolutely everything was complete, and then he remembered Vince.
Pidge didn’t think too much of the active wade-droids on Arus. Mostly, they couldn’t do anything with as little numbers as he thought they had. But Vince’s anxiety was infectious, and it got Pidge to mull over what kept them online if Wade wasn’t controlling them remotely.
“He said they were already pretty damaged... would a backup battery even make sense at that point?”
“What?” Anya asked, confused that Pidge had just spoken out of nowhere with no context to what he just said,
“Ah, sorry, Vince was worried about the wade-bots he and the other two had seen. Apparently they were active, but if they were beat up like he said they were, that’s just a little bit weird”
“Just a little bit, huh?” said Anya amused, “Well there’s no harm in checking up on the bots right? You have all the data now, so maybe a nearby scan will show if it’s a fluke or not”
“Good idea,” he said, already starting the scan, “Well, if these little rats think they can get one on us- oh”
Hearing the sudden change in Pidge’s attitude after the scan had completed told her she was right to get him to do one, and Pidge had wasted no time trying to get more info about what he saw,
“We need to get to the Hunkyard, now!”
---
The four raced back to the yellow lion. Daniel had looked back a few times, only to see the mega droid getting ever closer to them. When they finally got to yellow, Hunk immediately tried to get her up and running again. At first, she seemed to respond normally, until the droid took another step closer and put their progress back to zero. Hunk had already known that that thing was responsible for the sickly attitude of his lion, but it was getting out of hand.
While he struggled with his lion, Larmina tried hailing the castle repeatedly. But every time she called, the call would drop, or an error message would pop up, stopping any kind of communication from happening. She groaned as she kept getting the same messages over and over.
“Dude, if the calls and yellow aren’t working, then that... that thing has to be messing with our stuff somehow!” Daniel told her,
“Yeah, well, any kind of power we can get is good enough!” Hunk responded instead,
Yellow was still sluggish, but she was moving, and that’s what mattered. Except it wasn’t enough. The mega droid had finally reached them and as it loomed over, everyone knew they wouldn’t be able to run from its grasp from the start.
Everyone was more than worried. Vince was terrified and almost certain he was having a panic attack. Just when he started his practice to calm down, his vision when cyan again, which only freaked him out more. It had been about a week and a half since the last time he glowed, so it was still a fresh feeling.
Then he felt it again, that weird electrifying feeling from when King Alfor gave him the one and done ability of telekinesis. And just as last time, he wasn’t in full control of what he was doing,
(Man, I don’t even know what I’m doing in the first place!), Vince said inwardly,
Immediately after that, his vision returned to normal, and he was exhausted.
(Who knew having unknown mystical powers could take so much out of you), he thought tiredly,
Larmina and Daniel had seen the glow, well, spark more like. Vince’s eyes had literally crackled with blue electricity before stopping all together. Daniel was just about to ask him if he was ok before Hunk loudly whooped,
“I knew you had it in ya big girl!” he said, “Now we’re back in action!”
The malfunction the droids caused yellow was completely kicked out of her system. She was running as good as new. While Vince was still recovering, Larmina and Daniel shared a look, confirming that they had the same question in their head. Did Vince just fix the lion by himself?
The actual fight had begun. Yellow dogged every strike the droid had thrown at him. But dodging could only do so much for long. The droid shot and hit yellow with a weird orb of purple energy. Something all of them had recognized as the same energy the 9th had in their new weaponry. The jolt from being hit brought Vince back into the world in front of him,
“Can we try calling the castle again!” he yelled,
“No need!” suddenly answered Pidge,
The cadets all let out a sigh of relief and Larmina pointed the rest of the team out from where they were in the sky,
“Pidgeon??” Hunk said, trying to keep his secret a secret still, “How did you-“
Pidge played along, “I’m a genius, remember?~”
As the rest of the team flew over the giant bot, nobody really knew what to make of it,
“What even is that thing??” Lance asked,
“My stuff... but it’s evil now,” answered Hunk disappointed,
“We’ll help get your stuff back, Hunk,” Keith told him, “So come up here and help us form the big guy!”
“I thought you’d never ask!”
Once they formed the legend himself, Hunk felt way more ready to take on the now equally sized enemy across the team. Until the fight actually started and Voltron started having the same issues that yellow did beforehand. He was already weak, with his battery not fully charged, but whatever that droid was doing was absolutely making it worse. The fight wasn’t in their favor and in the cadets’ eyes, their favorite giant robot finally ran the chance of getting beaten.
“How is this happening?” cried out Allura,
Voltron got hit again and had trouble coming back from it,
Keith groaned, “Lance, what’s going on? Your punches aren’t packing as much as they should!”
“How should I know?” he replied, “We’re all having the same issues because of this stupid giant robot!”
“Careful who you say that too” Pidge strained, “Or else our own giant robot won’t like us anymore!”
Hunk had enough of having to deal with the broken wade-droids and their makeshift robeast, so he pointed out what probably should’ve been done in the first place,
“We need to form blazing sword! I want this fight over with!”
The team agreed and tried to form their ultimate weapon, but just like everything else, it just wouldn’t work. They tried again and again before Pidge checked the power levels and pointed out there wasn’t enough charge to bring it out,
“Not good, so not good,” Daniel said,
Hunk had just looked back to reassure him when and he saw Vince sparking, it stopped him in his tracks,
“Vince?? Buddy, how are you doing that?”
Vince had decided not to fight whatever was going on with him, so he started glowing again, but as per usual, he didn’t even know why.
“I’m not doing anything!”
Immediately after that, everyone noticed Voltron had started glowing, and to everyone in yellow lion, it was the same blue that Vince had to his own spark. They all had questions, and all but one of them went unanswered. Voltron had split apart and reconfigured. This time the black lion was a leg and the yellow lion was sitting on top, forming the new head of Voltron.
“I guess you did do something, cadet!” Lance said,
“What the fuck!? Am I the head?!” Hunk shouted, reasonably so, as no other lion had ever been the center, even in his myths and legends,
“Questions later!” Keith butted in, “Our power levels are back up! Hunk form blazing sword!”
“You got it, chief!”
As yellow center tried to bring out the blazing sword, it turned out a new configuration also brought a new weapon. After the light subsided, red and green lions had wrecking balls hanging from their open jaws, until spikes formed on said wrecking balls and turned them into wrecking maces.
“Maces?!” Hunk yelled, “We have maces now?!”
Larmina agreed, “Oh, that is way past rad!”
“Well, we don’t have a weapon for nothing Hunk, let’s do some damage!” Lance told him,
Hunk was way ahead of him at that point and didn’t even hesitate to swing a mace at the mega droid with full strength. They knocked off the droids broken screen and even got its arm to dangle a little bit, but the damage didn’t last for long, as the bot reattached both things in their places with the same energy it’d been using to beat the life out of Voltron.
That didn’t stop Hunk, who thought if he broke it up enough, it wouldn’t be able to piece itself together anymore. With every hit Voltron landed, he whooped and yelled, having the absolute time of his life,
“I told you we’d be breaking stuff!!”
The cadets were all excited, sometimes even telling Hunk where to hit or asking if he could do a certain move, which he obliged to, of course. Something told Hunk that his next move had to be radder than rad, so he called out to Daniel and instilled one last lesson in him that he couldn’t earlier,
“This is how you do your solooo!!” he said in a singsong voice,
Voltron stood on a cliff nearby, making sure to be above the droid, and swung one of his maces around in a circle. It built up speed and once Hunk thought it was enough; he used the momentum to smash the mace straight through the bot. When it connected, a burst of blue energy rocked both bots, but for the wade-droid it sapped whatever kept it online and left it in a heap of broken parts.
Everyone cheered, asked questions, or just tried to figure out what else the yellow center configuration could do.
“Did you get that out of your system?” Keith asked,
“I’ll never have that out of my system!” Hunk answered excitedly,
Hunk turned to the cadets, about to ask them about the bonding day, when he noticed they were talking between each other. Finally, Daniel turned to him,
“Wanna help us explore another secret place? We could totally use your help for what we’re planning to do!”
---
Hunk and the cadets waded through the rubble at the door of the newly exposed room in the catacombs. Even with flashlights it was hard to tell the size of it, but they could tell the room was huge, and for what they planned to do, it was perfect,
“Congratulations cadets! You’ve just found yourselves a personal lair!”
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