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The people of the Water Tribes lived at the top and bottom of the world. Because of this, their houses were made of packed ice, their floors covered in a carpet of snow. Trigel had never understood why someone would choose to live in conditions like this, but Blaytz seemed right at home under mountains of furry blue clothing. “Then it is true,” the owner of the home said, a man with a ponytail of curly brown hair. Re, his name was. “Avatar Alfor is gone.” “Zarkon himself slayed him,” Gyrgan said, voice heavy. Rex’s face pinched, clutching his son closer to his chest. “Zarkon,” he said bitterly. “It had been said he and the Avatar were the closet of allies.” “They were,” Trigel said, determinedly not thinking about the team they had once been. But the sinking sensation in her chest was impossible to repress, and her voice sank with it. “But now we are forced to fight his Galran army. Too much peace under the Voltron Alliance has left many nations defenseless.” “Are you sure there is no one in the North who could be the Avatar?” Florona, the child’s mother, asked. “The Galran occupy the North, but the hunt for the Avatar continues.” Rex gently rocked his son in his arms. “Are you certain is it him?” he asked, staring down at his son. “No,” Trigel answered. “There are thousands of Water Tribe scattered throughout the globe. We have checked several main colonies, but we thought it wise to warn the Southern Tribe of the Galran’s hunt.” “There are others here, born around the time of Alfor’s death,” Florona said. Blaytz gestured lazily, melting snow and wrapping it in a ring around his hand. “And a few others have shown signs of waterbending, too. We have spoken to them already. Until the children learn to bend, we cannot be certain which is the Avatar. We’re only here to warn.” “Warn?” Rex asked, finally looking up from his son. “You aren’t staying? But what if the Avatar is here?” “Than he must be hidden and the Alliance must be contacted,” Trigel said. “But there are thousand of Water Tribe people living in colonies. Any of their children could also be the Avatar, people living in places where they have no way to contact the Alliance normally. The search must continue.” Florona nodded slowly. “We must be on our way,” Blaytz said. “We can not be spotted near here.” Outside, a sky bison roared. “Lux,” Gyrgan exclaimed, diving out of the ten. Trigel and Blaytz took off after him, nearly crashing into him right outside the entrance. “No,” Blaytz whispered, reaching out towards the snow. It clumped above his hand a melted. Black snow had begun to fall. The Galra had arrived. The man, in his yellow and red airbender robes, stood out from the white destruction that surrounded him. Little was left of the small Southern Water Tribe village. Their huts were smashed in, their furs burning. The dead surrounded Coran on all sides, some partially buried by gray-tinted snow. This was not the first time the former airbender had seen a scene like this. The Northern Water Tribe. The Northern Air Temple. The Eastern Air Temple. Republic City. Several other Southern Water Tribe villages. Altea. At first, he thought he was hearing things, but the sound was unmistakable. The gentle cries of a baby. Someone had survived. Coran rushed through the snow through the sound, but he was slow and clumsy in the foreign terrain. Ice shards flew through the air, streaking upwards before falling as water. Trying not to trip on his robes, Coran ran towards the source of the explosion. Cradled by the snow, wrapped in layers of blue cloth and white fur, was a baby. The child squirmed and cried out, and the snow rolled away from him in a ring. A waterbender. The last waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe.
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The Galran base glowed with purple fire, towering above the little Earth Kingdom town and bathing it in purple light. To the townspeople, it was untouchable; a monument to the strength of the Galran Empire, something that touching meant death. But not to the Paladins of Voltron. The Galran firebenders, while powerful, were not something to cower under. They were something that had to be stopped. When the Empire stared them down, they stared right back. They were the last benders actively fighting the Empire, but it wasn’t only their talent at bending that set them apart from most of the world. They had hope. Hope that balance would return. Hope that the Galran Empire could be defeated, and the world could be free again. Hope in the return of the Avatar. But first, the Avatar would have to be found, a waterbender around the same age as Lance himself. Unfortunately, since the founding of Republic City, his people were scattered around the world, which meant hunting the world for Water Tribe families hidden in obscure places. If they had to that, they’d figured, why not give the Empire a little hell while they were at it. The Northern Tribe had fallen under Galran rule in the time of the last Avatar, the Southern Tribe taken a few months after Lance’s birth. The Avatar had been found in neither and could not, for every member of the Southern Water Tribe had taken prisoner. But his people would be free again, as soon as the found the Avatar. As much as he felt their suffering, there was little he could do here and now to help his own people. But the people of the Earth Kingdom were another story. Them, he could help here and now, Paladins at his side. They attacked the Galran bases on the full moon, when Lance’s bending was the strongest and at night, when the firebenders were at their weakest. The Paladins stood at the base of the tower, basking in its warmth and purple glow. Coran had dropped them off there on their sky bison, Lan, before disappearing into the woods. Lance cut a hand through the air with his palm up, drawing water straight out of the air. With a gentle movement in his wrist, it floated and spread out onto the stiff metal wall, hissing and sizzling. “Hot,” Lance said, hovering his hand over the metal exterior to feel the heat. They all knew what it meant—the base’s cannon was live. Several stories above them, massive braziers burned, manned by dozens of firebenders, prepared to shoot hot jets of flame out of a focusing shaft should the command come. Wordlessly, Pidge stepped forward, and gestured sharply upward with a tightly clenched fist. Hand and footholds created themselves, denting into the wall up until an opening—a ventilation shaft on the tower’s top level. The base was conveniently stationed at the bank of a river, which Lance pulled at with a gentle sweep of his arms. The water soared up and settled in a ring around each handhold, freezing into ice. “Hurry,” Allura hissed, reaching down to help Hunk reach the handholds. Pidge, Keith, and Allura followed silently after him. Still on the ground, Lance and Shiro watched them with sharp eyes—Shiro to catch them should one of them fall, Lance to keep the water frozen without making the grips slick. Tension seeped from Lance’s shoulders when Allura’s legs disappeared into the building, the ice melting and turning to steam. Shiro promptly scooped Lance up, wind whistling around them as Shiro took to the air. The lock of white hair hanging from the front of his head flowed with the wind, shifting to reveal the blue arrow tattooed on his forehead. Shiro was the last free Air Nomads, the first airbending culture, with their remote temples and sky bison. Allura’s Altean airbenders had come after, less spiritual but less detached from the rest of the world. With care, Shiro placed Lance’s feet inside the shaft, careful to not let any part of him touch the building’s burning exterior. Strong hands—Allura’s, mostly likely—gripped his feet and dragged him into the darkness. The air sizzled, before a small fire came to life in the palm of Keith’s hand, casting a warm glow over his pale face. He looked ethereal in the darkness, like something that belonged in the Spirit World. The fire flared brighter when a thump on the floor announced Shiro’s entrance. “Everyone in?” Keith asked, looking around at them. “Let’s go,” Shiro said, crawling towards Lance. Silently, they crawled deeper into the tower, Pidge leading the way. The blueprints to every Galra base was the same, but Lance had still yet to memorize their layout in full. Pidge abruptly halted at an opening, where light from the purple Galran fires was pouring in. She looked down the line, sharing a nod with each one of them. Lance carefully unscrewed his bending water before meeting Pidge’s gaze and nodding. Her hands raised, and with gentle movements, she coaxed the vent cover to wiggle out of place and towards them. She paused for a moment, waiting for the proper timing. Then, she jumped, and one by one, they descended into the Galra base. Careful not to let any water spill, Lance left down after Allura, landing in a crouch next to Keith. Shiro landed softly behind him in a flurry of red and yellow robes. He took off at a run at once, using the sentry’s rhythm that he’d learned as a Galran prison to lead his way. At a seemingly random turn, he stopped and turned to them. Although it was beyond Lance’s line of vision, he could sense the water flowing in the pipes surrounding the room. “We’re going in,” Shiro said, looking down at his prosthetic hand which came to life, glowing the same purple as Galran fire. A crack of wood came from down the line as Allura extended her bending staff. Then, with a burst of wind, Shiro leapt into action. Metal clicked against metal as the sentries rushed towards him, the warmth of their fire heating the air. As Lance rounded the corner, three of the metal-plated soldiers slammed into the far wall. Shiro straightened, gesturing Pidge towards the door. She smiled, nodding. Her leg lifted in a roundhouse kick, leaving a massive gash in the door, and with a punch, they flew off their hinges and into the Galran bonfires and taking a few sentries with them. As per usual, Keith was the first to leap into action, an elegant swirl of scarlet and gold and he whipped fire back towards the Galran firebenders. They shot back at him with bursts of flame, but Keith’s bending was far greater than any drone of the Empire. He looped it around behind him, and fired it straight back at them in an arc. A waterbending technique, Lance vaguely realized a moment later, the corners of his lips tugging into a smile. I taught him that. In the next moment, Lance registered the squad of sentries firing in his direction. His hand moved across his body, his bending water following it and forming a bubble behind him. A sharp movement of his wrist, and the water whipped out towards them, putting out their fires and knocking them unconscious to the ground. The air around Lance heated as Keith melted the walls into lava for Hunk to bend. Sentries groaned as Allura and Shiro flung them across the room with powerful blasts of air, some yelling in pain as Pidge bent their armor to hit their pressure points. Sentries were little match for benders trained as they had been in the time of the Four Nations. Around him, he could feel the water in that ran through the building, in the energy in the people around him, the blood that ran through their veins. Keith’s energy simmered hot through his limbs, radiant. He moved to Lance’s left like fire itself, agile and harsh on any that crossed him. Allura and Shiro were cooler, Allura calm and efficient, Shiro more brutal with an odd disconnect where his arm turned to flame. The power of an earthbender was more contained and mellow, but when they struck, the earth itself bent to their will. But there was a seventh bender here, more fluid than Shiro and with less raw power that Allura, but unmistakably an airbender standing tall at the end of the hall. Their power shifted— His eyes wrenching shut, Lance’s hands shot out before he could think, his bending water crashing around him as he reached for the foreign airbender. The sickly crack of her joints echoed in his own, the way she strained in his grip vibrating in his skull. He slowly opened his eyes, but it was still just he and her, her lithe body trembling under his control. She was completely at his mercy. He could do anything. The possibility spread out in his mind. Bend her neck until it snapped. Shatter her bones. Rupture her veins. He heard Coran’s awed and horrified whisper in his head, when he’d first accidentally used the technique. Bloodbender. He was the most powerful waterbender they’d ever met, the first Paladins had said before the Galra had taken them. So powerful, it seemed, that his control over the airbender did not waver even as his hands began to shake. Bloodbender. Lance eyes met hers, a shade of blue greener and brighter than his, watering. Bloodbender. He could only watch as she writhed. Bloodbender. His hands violently shook, but Lance was a powerful bender, and still, she could not move. Bloodbender. Then, moving on more instinct than thought, his hold on the airbender snapped, and his left arm swiped outward. It took a moment for Lance’s mind to catch up with the instincts of his bending—frozen in an arch, inches away from Keith was a whip of water. When Keith turned towards him, a genuine smile on his face, the only thing Lance could to was clench his fists and force his trembling hands to still. “I got you, buddy,” he exclaimed, melting the frozen whip and wrapping it around him. Lance was frozen watching Keith’s smile gradually widen that he didn’t notice the crescent of wind soaring through the air towards Keith. The firebender was flipped off his feet, but years of training and the aide of firebending allowed him to turn his fall into a more graceful flip. Coming from behind, Hunk suddenly landed on the ground behind Lance, groaning. His attention focused on Keith, he hadn’t noticed the arrival of two others in robes that matched the airbender he’d controlled—the source of the water whip that had lashed out at Keith. Since when did the Galran Empire have a waterbender? Lance hadn’t the slightest clue, but at the moment he didn’t really care. The ground tore open, the metal twisting and reaching for Shiro’s hovering form and wrapping itself around him. “Shiro!” Pidge exclaimed, turning and reaching her arms towards the metal. A hole tore open in his prison’s base. It fell to the ground, slamming Shiro into the ground sideways. Swearing loudly, she ripped an arm through the air, whip Shiro’s glowing hand tore through the other side, splitting the cage in half. From behind, air funneled in the air towards Pidge, slamming her into the ground face down. “No!” Lance yelled, shifting his weight backwards and wrapping the water around behind him, before spinning on one foot and extending his palms out towards the airbender. A jet of water wrapped around her, freezing the airbender to the wall. But even as Lance gained, all around him, it seemed he was the only one. Shiro was gaining no ground as he stood over his sister-in-law’s motionless form, shooting back the attacks of sentries and the metalbending Galran. Wrapped in purple and orange fire, Keith gracefully moved between attacks, surrounded by sentries. The waterbender had taken an interest in Allura, and the two were fighting in the style of the firebender’s agni-kai duels, trading whips of water and slices of air one after another. Crouching down at Hunk’s side, Lance called the water to lift Hunk to the side of the room and gently settle him on the ground. His pants were cut open and stained red, but without his bending Lance wouldn’t have be able to tell how deep the wound really went. “Go, Lance,” Hunk said, voice straining. “I’ll be alright.” Lance forced a smile of his face as he pulled out more of his bending water and placing it on Hunk’s leg. The water hummed and glowed, redirection Hunk’s energy to slowly stich his wound together. “Lance,” Hunk grunted out softly, sweeping a hand outward. Lance turned his head just in time to see lava snaking across the floor, rising to encase two sentries in a rock shell. His eyes wide, Lance faced returned his focus to Hunk’s leg. It didn’t have to be perfect, he reminded himself. Hunk just needed to be able to stand. He could not see it, but he felt the streams of water acing through the air. He heard Allura’s screams as she was struck from her ball of floating air, and the loud thump as she was knocked onto the smooth metal floor. Hunk’s eyes widened. “Allura,” he quietly groaned, straining his neck to see what had happened to her. Shaking his head, he pressed Hunk down into the bed of water. “Relax, buddy.” His face was pained, but Hunk knew better than to not listen to Lance when he was healing. A blast of fire shot over Lance’s heat, so close he could almost smell his hair burning. Whipping around, he used the hand on Hunk’s chest to draw water up in a shield. When the sentry’s two handfuls of flame were thrown, he shot the water towards him and slammed him into the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Allura on the ground, desperately spinning her staff to keep the waterbender at bay. In front of him, sentries surrounded Keith, his bending getting more ruthless as sentries began to turn their attention towards him and let Shiro duel it out with the earthbender. Shiro was grounded—his concern for Pidge was blocking his ability to fly. Lance couldn’t see what was happening inside the ring of soldier surrounding Keith, but he heard Keith angry and pained scream. Flamed poured out from the center, roaring hot enough out of Keith’s mouth that their base burned blue. He hadn’t the slightest clue what had happened, but he heard the pain in Keith’s voice. Lance didn’t know when he’d let go of Hunk’s leg, but Lance’s senses had fixed on the new burns on Keith’s skin, on Pidge’s limp form, on Allura’s desperate grip on her staff. And then he felt the fire. It was lighter and softer than water, untamable and harder to grasp. The blast streaked through the air towards Keith— Lance swung his hand towards the fire, whipping it back towards the sentries who fired. Keith turned towards him, firebender robes whipping in the wind. His eyes widened, and even as Lance rose above the floor on a column of air, all he could see was the purple in Keith’s gray eyes, the awe and the hope and something else that pinched the corner of his smile. The earthbender was the first to react, shooting a ball of flaming rocks in his direction. Lance would have cast it away with a jet of water, a sent it to somewhere Hunk or Pidge could use. But the earth was no longer just a projectile, soaring through the air to strike him down. It was connected to him in a way only the water had been before, connected in way he could bend. He reached out and caught it, cleaving it into smaller pieces. Hands clenched into fists, he threw the rocks towards the remaining sentries and slammed them to the ground. The Galran benders were trying to land shots, but now they could see the sloppiness—they had been trained not by masters of their native elements, but by firebenders. He felt the water around him on the floor, in the air, running through the walls, which he pulled around him in a spinning ring leaving large gashed in the way. The benders tried to hit their mark, but the water was an extension of him, and the other elements were turned away before he could even turn to look at them. He shoved the water outwards in a crashing wave, searching for the all the benders in the room. With care, he gently wrapped his fellow Paladins in bubbles of water and propped them upright, the water glowing at he healed their wounds. But with the other ones, Lance took no such care. They were snatched up in a wave as fierce as the ones at sea, encasing them in blocks of ice. When they hit the wall, the metal bent around them, wrapping around the edges of the box and shoot spikes in it to hold it in place. The air funnel shift Lance to the middle of the massive doorway, the massive crystal plates the Galra used to focus their massive jets of flame sparkling in the light of the full moon. He reached out toward them, his hands enveloped in whirlwinds. The glass smashed outwards, the wind shoot it far off into the night. A sweep his hands, and the small fire left in the braziers began to burn blue-hot, melting the containers holding them. He felt the presence of sentries racing up the stairs, fires ready in the palms of their hands. A wave of his hand, and the fires exploded outward, knocking out the people who had made them. Down the building in the many floors beneath them, he could feel the blood in the veins of Galran sentries, the flames they kept kindled in the palms of their hands. He call on them, fed them until they imploded. Lance waited for a moment, waiting to see if any of the sentries below would stir. When he felt nothing, he lowered himself to the ground and released the Paladins from the water, each fully healed. “Lance?” Keith asked, breathless. Lance turned to him, staring straight into Keith’s gray eyes. They flashed at him, reflecting a bright white glow. “It’s you,” Keith said. “You’re—you’re the Avatar, Lance.” Most of him could only register the vibrations of Keith’s voice, but some part of him, deep inside heard. It was small, and weak, and slow, but it got through. You’re the Avatar, Lance. He’d just used firebending. Earthbending. Airbending. He could metalbend. “Avatar?” he whispered, his voice dry. Keith offered him a small smile. “That’s you, Lance.” It was the last thing Lance saw before the exhaustion took over, and he collapsed to the floor. The Avatar.