Third Person POV

"Pidge, I don't like the idea of you going alone," Shiro said through a screen to Pidge who was in her lion. "You sure you don't need backup?"

"I'm sure," Pidge replied. "The intel that shopkeeper gave me leads me to believe they could pull out of their location at any time. I need to act fast. This may be my only chance. Plus you guys still have plenty to do on Olkarion."

"You're right," Shiro says. "Good luck."

"Hey, while you're out, will you look for some more fluuto beans?" Hunk asked.

"Oh, oh! Or those gizz leaves!" Nyle exclaimed.

"No, no, no! No more beans or leaves for Hunk and Nyle!" Lance shouted.

Pidge groaned before looking at the screen. "Gotta go," She said before ending the transmission.

After she hung up, everyone went back to their daily routines and did what they were doing before.

                                                                                   ~~~''~~~

Nyle POV

We were helping the refugees on Olkarion, getting everyone situated before Coran came out with a few more refugees where all the paladins were. 

"Excuse me! Coming through!" Coran shouted as he squeezed through the massive aliens before falling, getting walked over as they came out. "Just right in there. They'll get you sorted out." He said before getting up. 

"Is that the last of them Coran?" Allura asked.

"That's it," Coran says. "A few more hundred more souls looking for a new home."

"A few hundred more soldiers in the fight against the Galra," Shiro adds. 

The Green Lion flew above their heads and roared as it started landing. "Hey, Pidge's back!" I yelled, picking my daughter up who was waddling around. 

They all ran up to the lion, watching Pidge come out with another person with her. "Hey, everybody. This is my brother Matt."

Pidge moved so everyone could see Matt. "Hey, everybody," Matt spoke. 

"Matt, this is Hunk, Lance, Coran, Nyle, and the little baby is Nyle's daughter Mereida," Pidge says. 

"Hey," Hunk greets.

"Nice to meet you," Lance says while waving his hand.

"Pleasure," Coran says. 

"You look exactly like Pidge," I said.

"And this is Princess Allura of Altea," Pidge adds.

Matt's eyes went wide and his face went red. "Whoa!"

"It is so wonderful to finally meet you, Matt," Allura says. 

"Whoa! Oh, my goodness! You are so beautiful!" Matt exclaims. "It is my honor to meet you, Princess."

Lance showed up behind Allura and glared stars straight into Matt, causing him to jump back. When he looked ahead he stood shocked to see his commanding officer there.

"Shiro?" He questioned. "He ran over and stood in front of him. "It's so good to see you, um, sir."

He held his hand out for the man to shake. Shiro took it, pulling Matt into a hug.

After they pulled apart, Shiro stared at Matt with a smile. "Pidge never gave up on finding you."

"Yeah, she can be pretty stubborn at times," Matt replied, looking back at Pidge.

"And I want you to know that all of us will help you find your father," Shiro adds.

"Thanks," Matt responds.

"Matt, this is the Castle of Lions," Pidge says, motioning to the castle.

"Whoa. Nice ship," Matt says.

"Let me take you on a tour!" Pidge exclaimed, dragging Matt inside the castle.

I laughed softly and rolled my eyes. "She's really excited. I'm happy for her, she has her brother back."

Lance groans and crossed his arms. "I'm not fond of him."

I snickered and raised my eyebrow. "Why not? Cause you gotta outdo him?"

He scoffed and rolled his eyes. "No! I just, I-I don't know!"

I laughed more and shake my head. "You're ridiculous sometimes Lance."

I smiled and walked away inside the castle before sitting in the lounge with Mereida since all my duties were done anyway. I sat and watched her play before sitting Pidge and Matt come in as Pidge sat down. 

"And this is the lounge, you know, where we just hang. Just Voltron paladins hanging out. Nyle's in here a lot with Mereida," Pidge says.

"Yep, pretty much," I added.

"Hey, hey!" Hunk says as he comes through the door with a tray of drinks. "I made celebratory milkshakes for you two! Just a little welcome gift to Matt from me and Kaltenecker. No big deal. Oh, hey Ny. I got one for you too," He added.

I laughed softly and hum softly. "Thanks, Hunk." He handed us our drinks and I sipped on mine before he sat next to Matt.

"Fun fact about Alteans," Hunk started. "They don't get brain freeze. Coran and Allura just totally hoovered up their shakes in one slurp. Uh, I've never seen anything like it before."

"Hey, Matt, what exactly have you been doing since you managed to escape that Galra prison?" I asked.

"I've been stationed at a listening outpost, monitoring Galra radio chatter," Matt replies.

"Are you serious?" Hunk asked. "Then you should totally check out the Galra finder Pidge and Nyle built. We used it to track down a Galra fleet and save a planet." He finished by sharing a fist bump with Pidge.

"Hunk made the first locator that led us to the first Voltron Lion," Pidge started. "And we just built an upgraded version of it to track Lotor."

"Wow, Pidge. Dad would be so proud if he could see what you've done here," Matt says. 

Mereida squealed as she started at Matt, getting up before waddling over to him. He let out a small laugh and put her on his lap. "Why hello, you must be Mereida."

I smiled and hum softly. "She's trying to figure you out. You must look too much like Pidge."

She looked between Matt and Pidge a bunch of times before yelling out, swinging her arms. We all laughed at her little frustrated brain. 

"How old is she?" Matt asked, letting her take a sip of his milkshake. 

"She actually turns a year old in about a week," I replied.

"Really? Wow, and you've been raising her in space?"

"Yep. We all have kinda. Everyone's been a really big help. Especially when mommy needs a nap."

Matt smiled as he looked down at Mereida. "Did you have her here in the castle?"

"Yeah, I was about 4 months pregnant when we first came to the castle and around 8 months when I had her. Born 9 pounds 6 ounces. She's was a big newborn."

"Whoa, that is pretty big," Matt replied. "Is her dad back on Earth?"

I bit my lip and hummed softly. "Uh, that's a bit of a long story. But no he, he's in space he came here with us but, he's with other people helping a different way."

"Oh, well I'm sorry for asking," Matt says clearing his throat. 

"No, no it's ok. You asked it's fine," I said.

"I think you know him, Matt. He always hung around Shiro. I'm sure you saw or met him at some point," Pidge pointed out.

Matt tilted his head a little. "The kid that always hung around Shiro? Really? That's him?"

I nodded and leaned back. "Yep, that's her dad. Anyway, why don't you come and check out the Galra finder?" I said getting up and gently taking Mereida into my arms, walking to the Green Lion's hanger.

We got to the hanger and Pidge fired up the finder, Matt walking around it to check it out. 

"This is a pretty sweet algorithm for locating Galra targets within a statistically acceptable margin or error. And I love that you guys color-coded it, because what are we, animals?" Matt said, causing them to laugh.

"Ugh, you two are definitely related," Hunk said throwing a piece of his food into his mouth.

"Hunk, using the Fraunhofer lines to track Voltron, and then the comet...I mean, that's genius," Matt adds.

"Oh, well, yeah, I try," Hunk said, throwing another piece of food but missing.

I rolled my eyes and shake my head. "He had some help."

"They say Fraunhofer was the greatest glassmaker in Europe and that when he died, he took all his greatest recipes to the grave with him," Matt says.

"I want a Fraunhofer glass," Hunk adds.

"So, check this out," Matt says before taking out a small tablet. "This has all the relevant data from my time with the rebels. I think if we plug this info into the setup you guys have here, it might fill in the gaps. Then, we might just have the best anti-Galra intelligence mining operation in this or any other reality."

This one time, we went to another reality. It was pretty lame," Hunk says.

"Wait, you what? You were in another reality?" Matt questioned.

Pidge gave a smug look as she took the tablet from Matt. "No big deal."

"My little sister," Matt says with a wide smile on his face.

We started to input the data from Matt's tablet into our own setup and work on getting it in the setup correctly. 

"I think we've just about got it," Matt says.

We waited a moment before a more ranged effect came onto the screen, all of us cheering. 

"This is unbelievable," Hunk says. "We're tracking Galra fleet movements almost live."

"I think I know a few tweaks we can make to extend our range," Pidge adds.

"Hold on, Pidge," Matt says.

"What's up?" Pidge asked.

"It's a scrambled message," Matt starts. "I've collected hundreds of 'em. I never crack 'em."

"Let me see," Pidge says as she leans forward before Matt passed the screen to her. Pidge looked at it and analyzed it. 

"I don't think this is just a simple number/letter swap," I said.

"I've run these through every kind of decryption technology I can think of, and I've spent days with just the numbers and a Galra language log. Nothing," Matt adds.

"Maybe they're not words," Hunk says. "Maybe they're just numbers."

"Maybe, they're a frequency?" Pidge says.

"A quantum signal that broadcasts other frequencies to go to?" Matt starts. "It's too high. These are more than 3,000 gigahertz."

I furrowed my eyebrows before tilting my head. "Let's try inverting it."

"What?" Matt asked.

"For every wave we receive, there's only partial transmittance, right?" I questioned as Pidge started typing away.

"Oh, right, yeah. So, we figure the transmission coefficient..." Hunk starts.

"And turn for the frequency of the reflected waves," Matt finished. 

Pidge put it all together before we heard actual voices, cheering at the success.

"Members of the Seventh, 11th, 12th, and 14th Fleet, assemble to rally point trox-lyte immediately. Engage targets at coordinates in next transmission by order of Emperor Zarkon," The voice finished.

"All of us stared at the screen in complete shock and slight fear. "Zarkon is alive?" Hunk questioned.

"Guys, look at this," Pidge says as we all looked at the Galra Finder.

"I've never seen troop mobilization on this level before," Matt says. 

"What are they attacking?" I asked.

"That's just it," Pidge started. "As far as I can tell, nothing. There are no planets, no rebel ships, no Blade of Marmora bases, nothing."

We went to the bridge with what we'd found and brought it to everyone's attention.

"Whoever they're attacking, we have to help," Allura says.

"I don't like it," Shiro says. "We should be gathering intelligence, not diving into a fight without knowing why, especially now that we know Zarkon is alive."

"We could go check it out," Pidge says.

"I think they'd probably notice us," Lance points out.

"Not if we're cloaked," Pidge says.

"You have cloaking? Who are you?" Matt exclaimed.

"I'm not sure it's safe for just the Green Lion," Shiro pipes in.

"I'm pretty sure I can upgrade Voltron with cloaking," Pidge says. "We could all go."

Lance nudged Pidge and said with a smug smirk. "Were you waiting for your big brother to show up before you rolled that one out?" 

"It's something I've been working on, but I can't pilot the Green Lion and operate the cloaking at the same time. But if I had a co-pilot..."

"Absolutely," Matt replied, taking Pidge's hand.

"Let's get to the lions," Shiro says as everyone started walking away. I hum and stay on the bridge with Coran since I wasn't a part of Voltron itself.

The team formed Voltron as they left and we watched carefully as they got closer.

"We're getting closer. Everyone, get ready," Shiro said.

"Go ahead. Run the cloaking subroutine," Pidge said to Matt.

"Got it," Matt replied. "Initializing cloak. I'm not sure how long we can keep this up."

"All right, let's take a look at who the Galra are attacking," Allura says.

As they got closer, we could see the Galra attacking another Galra ship. 

"What the cheese? It's Galra-on-Galra violence, again," Lance says.

"Oh, these people just do not like each other," Hunk adds.

Then as we watched more, we saw two ships come out and fly away from the ship being attacked.

"Whose ships are those?" Pidge asked.

"It's Lotor," Allura said.

"Lotor and Zarkon must be fighting for control of the Empire," Shiro says.

"Guys, those ships are getting awfully close," Hunk points out.

"Uh-oh. The trails from Lotor's ship drives messed with our cloaking spectrum," Matt said.

"Can you find a workaround?" Pidge asked.

"It's too late. Our cover's been blown. We may have to engage," Shiro spoke firmly.

Voltron started flying away before getting shot at. "Hunk, use your bayard," Shiro exclaimed.

"You got it," Hunk replied as the shoulder cannon formed, shooting it to destroy most of the fighters.

"All right, that'll hold them. Let's get out of here," Shiro said before they started flying back to the castle.

We started picking up a transmission before intercepting it, hearing Zarkon's voice come from it.

"Attention, citizens of the Galra Empire. From this day forward, my son Lotor is to be regarded as a fugitive criminal of the empire. All citizens are authorized to use deadly force to stop him or any of his soldiers. I repeat, Prince Lotor is an enemy of the state. Engage with extreme prejudice. Kill on sight."

Oh no, this is really bad.