I climbed the last few stairs, then crept out onto the Galaxy Garrison's roof. Nobody else was up here tonight, thank goodness. It had been several months since I came here. Although I liked what I was learning, it had been way too long since I'd had any time to myself.
I wasn't technically supposed to be up here. But who cared? I flopped backwards, carefully lowering my head onto the cool, rough concrete, and stared up at the stars.
Right now, the night sky looked distant, peaceful. It was almost hard to believe that there was so much going on out there. Starships going back and forth between planets and galaxies, important things happening, people going about their lives in all kinds of different ways.

The communicator in my back pocket buzzed, making me jump. Oh, great. I had forgotten I was supposed to check in with somebody tonight. Well, I couldn't really hang up on the call. I sighed, tapped the screen, and waited until a familiar face popped up. Dark grayish-blue eyes, set in a sharp-featured face topped by a thick mess of black hair. Keith Kogane, my mentor and sort-of friend, smiled wryly at me.
"Hi, Karah. Snuck out, huh?"
I nodded, a bit sheepish. "Just to the roof. I needed some time to think."
"That's understandable. Just don't make a habit of it, okay?"
"I won't." I promised.
I meant it, too. Keith was the person who'd found me and my little sister Mari, barely surviving in a slum on our home planet, and brought us here to train at the Garrison. He'd changed my life. I planned to repay that debt by making him proud.
"So aside from this, how are you and Mari doing?"
"Pretty good. Mari's having a great time in the Earth school you signed her up for. Every weekend she comes over to visit and she's always bouncing around, telling me all about whatever project she's been doing and the new friends she's made. Apparently she wins a lot of competitions on the monkey bars at recess."
Keith laughed. "Yeah, I can see why having four arms would give her an edge there."
"I've been getting pretty good grades, too." I added.
"What about the simulator? How are you doing on that?"
I grinned. "Oh my god, it's the best! It's actually kinda too easy, though. I can't wait for next week. We start flying real fighters then."
"Good for you! The controls on the simulator tend to respond a few seconds slower than the real thing, so you'll have to kind of recalibrate once you start flying for real."
We talked a little more about that kind of thing, and then went off on a tangent about what the best kinds of dive maneuvers for different situations were. By the time we were finished with that, it was nearly midnight.
"Alright." Keith said. "You should be getting back to bed, and I need to go."
I didn't respond, too busy staring at the strange light in the sky. Which was steadily getting closer. What was that?
"Karah?" Keith asked. "What's going on?"
"I think there's a meteor about to hit nearby."
He frowned. "There weren't any meteors on a collision course for Earth last time I checked. None. Get inside and tell somebody what's going on."
I nodded. "On it."
Keith hung up, and I ran for the stairwell.

On my way down the stairs, I bumped into Jason and Leilah. They were supposed to be my training team, but I didn't really know either of them. They were both humans, and had always seemed a little weirded out by my four arms and everything.
"Oh, hi Karah."
"Guys, we need to find Katie Holt."
They blinked at me. "Uh, why?"
"Because there's a weird meteor about to land near here, and she's the only adult I trust to not get us in trouble if we tell her."
Jason shrugged. "Alright. Her lab is this way."
He pointed down a hallway that looked exactly the same as all the others.
"How do you know?" I asked.
He adjusted his square glasses, looking smug. "I memorized all the layout maps. C'mon, hurry up."
We dashed along the hallway, making a few turns, until sure enough we got to the Holts' private lab area. I banged on the door until it slid open, revealing a short young woman with wild ginger hair and a gigantic mug of coffee in one hand. She raised an eyebrow behind her round glasses when she saw us.
"Why are you cadets out of bed this late?"
Leilah and Jason pointed at me, innocent expressions on their faces. I death-glared at them. They had totally been sneaking out too. Then I turned back to Katie. "There's a meteor heading right for us. I was up on the roof and I saw it."
She blinked. "There aren't any meteors scheduled to hit for months. Come in while I check it out."
We obeyed, careful not to touch the jumble of computer parts, blueprints, and half-finished prototypes that overflowed the worktables.
Katie dashed over to one of the many computers lining the walls. "Okay, running a scan . . . WHAT THE QUIZNACK?!!"
"What?" I demanded, rushing over to look at the screen. My jaw dropped. "Are those . . .?"
The scientist nodded. "Unless we're both hallucinating, which is statistically really unlikely, those are the Voltron lions. Well, three of them. Green, Black, and Blue."
Jason gaped. "Why are they here?"
Leilah couldn't even form words, eyes wide as she fidgeted nervously with the hem of her blue headscarf.
Katie shrugged. "Whatever it is, it's something big. Green might be able to tell me. Come on!"
"Wait, us too?"
"Well I don't trust you alone in my lab, so yeah!"

The four of us raced down the halls, out of the Garrison and into the parking lots outside.
Katie quickly found us a jeep. "Get in."
We climbed in, and before we could even do up our seatbelts we were speeding out towards the landing runways.
I yelped, clutching at the dashboard with all four arms. "Who exactly taught you to drive?!"
"My mom!"
We skidded to a stop as the lights in the sky dimmed and grew into recognizably cat-like shapes. I couldn't help gasping as the three robotic lions landed, footsteps shaking the ground. I'd heard stories about them, everybody had, but nothing could have prepared me for the real thing. The gleaming metal, the sheer size of them, and the huge glowing spotlights of their eyes that seemed to be looking right at us with a weird kind of intelligence.
The Green lion walked towards us, a little apart from the other two. Seeing something that big moving on its own was freaky, sure, but also kind of exhilarating. Grinning, Katie hopped out of the jeep and ran up to it. The lion lowered its head, and she stretched out a hand to touch its muzzle. "Hey, girl."
Even though the huge robot dwarfed her, I got the sense that they were perfect equals right now. Katie leaned her forehead against the lion's jaw, talking too softly for me to hear. Her eyes were closed. Was she in some kind of trance? I wasn't sure, but I felt . . . something. Like a tug on my thoughts. Weird, yeah, but I can't describe it any better than that. I looked around, trying to find the source of the odd feeling.
My eyes settled on the Black lion. A warm feeling, almost like a mental hug, rushed over me as the tugging got stronger. I had to get closer. I didn't even know why, I just knew I had to. Maybe there were answers here. I tried to climb out of the jeep, but Leilah grabbed my arm. "Seriously? What are you even doing?"
"Getting to the bottom of this." I snapped. "Are you guys coming or not?"
"Count me in." Jason said. "I don't know when I'll get another chance for a firsthand look at tech like this."
"That's what you're focused on?" I asked incredulously.
"Come on, this is a priceless opportunity!"
Leilah sighed. "Well, I guess somebody has to keep you two knuckleheads out of trouble. Wait for me."
"Watch it with the name-calling." Jason grumbled.

We climbed out of the jeep, walked around Katie, and were just about to pass her when her eyes snapped open. She looked grim. "I hate to say this, but I think I know why they're here. And where the other two lions went."
"Why?"
The Green Paladin rubbed her temples, suddenly seeming a lot older than usual. "They came to find new paladins. Apparently there's some kind of threat, and the Universe needs Voltron again."
"Wait, new paladins?!" Jason asked. "What about you and everyone else?"
Katie sighed. "I don't know if you've noticed, but we're old. Well, not that old, but we've got other lives now. We've grown up and grown apart. And even if we could all get together again, it wouldn't work. Green . . . she isn't accepting me like she used to. I'm betting it'll be the same for the others."
"Forget that, what's the threat?" I asked. "We need as much info as we can, we need to warn everybody."
"The lions aren't even sure what to call it. But the images they're showing me . . . you're right, we need to warn people. I'll contact Shiro and my Dad. Veronica, too."
"Who's Veronica?" Leilah asked.
"Commander McClain. We probably need to talk to Keith and the Blades as well."
She went back to the jeep and started making calls, giving everyone the short version of what was going on. The tugging in my mind started up again, more urgent this time. Almost like somebody was calling out to me. I looked at Leilah and Jason. "Do you guys feel that?"
"Feel what?"
"A weird sort of pull."
"What are you- actually, yeah." Leilah said. "What is that?"
Jason blinked. "Me too. It's coming from that way."
He pointed towards the Green lion.
I shook my head. "Mine's pulling me that way." I nodded at the Black lion.
Jason went ashen under his dark skin. "Do you think . . . ?"
I snorted. "Us? Paladins? No way."
But that pull wasn't letting up, so I stepped closer to the Black lion. It was definitely the source of the feeling now. I sped up until I was practically running, closer, closer, until I was standing at its feet. I couldn't believe this was happening, but I felt certain the lion wanted me to do something. I just wasn't sure what.

Hesitantly, I reached out a hand like I'd seen Katie do.
"Hi." I whispered. "I kind of feel silly, talking to you like this. Do . . . do you want me to fly you? I'm not sure I can do that, being a leader or saving people or whatever. But I know I can try. Keith says I'm even more stubborn than he is. You know him, right? He used to fly you. I bet he still could."
The tugging stopped, replaced by a different feeling. Something that felt like home, like when Mari hugged me or Keith told me he was proud of me. Trust, I realized. The Black lion trusted me. Now I had to show I was worthy of that trust.
"I'll try, big guy. You know I will."
No response.
"I promise." I whispered fiercely.
Those spotlight eyes, which had gone dark after it landed, lit up again, and the lion slowly stretched its head down, mouth opening into a little flight of metal steps. I walked up the steps, into the cab. It was dark inside, but as soon as I found the pilot's chair and sat down, I knew what to do. I stretched out two of my hands, feeling for the controls, and found them. A tingling raced through my fingers as I curled them around the grips.
The whole cab lit up with hologram screens in purplish-white light, showing symbols that I couldn't quite read but somehow understood anyway. Outside, I could see the landing runways filling up with people, staring in wonder. I could feel something flicker to life inside of me, some of that same wonder.
I took a deep breath. "Okay. Let's do this."
The controls moved with my hands, almost like the lion already knew what I wanted to do. The world lurched around me as Black lifted its head and let loose a bone-shaking roar. I whooped and pumped a fist in the air. "Yeah!!"
Then what I'd just done fully sank in, and I facepalmed with all four hands.
"Oh, no. What did I just get myself into?"
This was by far going to be the biggest responsibility I'd ever had in my life. But I had promised the Black lion I'd do this. I never break a promise, and I wasn't starting now. So I squared my shoulders, took a few more deep breaths, and stood up.
"Okay, dude. I have to go get scolded now, but I'll be back."
I got a strong feeling from Black, something along the lines of, "You'd better."
"Look," I said, a bit irritated. "Just because I'm younger than any paladin you've had before doesn't mean I'm going to fail you. I made you a promise, Black. I'm keeping that promise, and I'm helping you do what we need to do. I will be back, and when I get back, we start figuring out how to work together. Got it?"
The feeling I got in response this time was amusement, mixed with firm approval. Maybe I could handle this after all.