Chapter Text
Loop 39
Allura could not believe her eyes. Never in all her years has she been so shocked. “You cannot possibly be thinking of going out into battle in that?!”
Shiro looked up to Allura, his helmet resting on his hip. “I don't see why not.”
“But it's so... so... distasteful!”
Standing in front of her are the paladins of Voltron dressed in lion fur suits colour coordinated to match their respective lions.
“Is this an Earth thing?” Coran asked.
Lance looked at him dead in the eye, not that he could see it through the ‘head’, and said, “Yes.”
And in loop number thirty-nine, the universe came to know, fear, and respect the five furry paladins of Voltron.
Loop 101 (1)
Lance watched Hunk and Shay talk at the cliffside. The sun was moving up high in the sky and they had not seemed to move since their moment at the break of dawn. The Balmera rotates very slowly and sunrise and sunset could take hours so who knows how long they've been sitting together.
The rest paladins had spent their time teaching the Balmerans to defend themselves in case the Galra were ever to return and even gave them a communicator. Pretty standard Balmera stuff done a hundred times over all in all. Lance wondered if Hunk was going through the motions or was actually talking to her.
It was hard to see conversations with people as actual conversations instead of repeated dialogue when you have looped so many times.
Lance hummed to himself as he plucked his guitar. This time around, they decided to bring instruments to entertain themselves. They had not really played instruments before and decided that they would try to master one by the time this loop ends, so this was a nice new challenge. Besides, Keith picked up a guitar as well and Lance was determined to be better at it than him, never mind that Keith was learning bass and Lance was not.
Lance was sitting a little ways off from the castle on one of the newly formed crystals. The warm reds of the sunrise lit the crystals up and the refracted lights bounced here and there. He had to admit, no matter how many times he had seen it, Balmera was a beautiful planet. Especially at sunrise.
He looked away from the sunrise when he heard the crunch of footsteps. A Balmeran child shyly approached him, he (or was it a she?) shifted uncomfortably for a second before pointing at his guitar and asking, “What is that?" (Ah female then.)
“This is a guitar.” Lance explained. “It's used to make music. Here, listen.” He strummed a random tune on his guitar.
The little kid stared in awe and Lance grinned. “Here lemme play you something.” He said and started to play.
-----
Princess Allura had already been escorted to her quarters to rest. Pretty standard stuff. Shiro knew that Coran would be taking off in an hour or so, not wanting to linger for too long. The rest of the team had dispersed to do their own thing out of sheer boredom despite their fatigue. Even if they had saved this planet a hundred times over times, fighting, running and avoiding gunfire was still exhausting no matter how many time you do it. Though that didn't stop it from being devastatingly boring.
Shiro exited the castle to check up on what the rest were up to. He knew that Hunk would want to spend some time with Shay, that was a given, but the rest were a little unpredictable. He heard faint music and was drawn to where the rest of the paladins were jamming out in the front of a crowd of Balmerans on top of a large crystal.
Speakers and mics were set up (Pidge and Hunk’s work Shiro assumed), the two huge black speakers bracketing the four of them as they played.
Hunk was on the drum set, Pidge on the keyboard, Lance with a guitar and Keith on a bass. Lance sang about hope and freedom to a catchy beat. Shiro was pretty sure they were singing a cover but couldn't quite recall the name of the song.
“Thank you Balmera! We love you!” Lance shouted into the mic as the music died down. Cheers erupted from the crowd of Balmerans, this was the most excited Shiro has seen them in a long time.
The four of them hopped off the ‘stage’ and approached Shiro with face-splitting grins. “Hey.” He greeted them before turning to look at Keith for answers.
“They wanted to introduce Balmera to the ‘wonders of music’ early.” Keith hooked his fingers with air quotes.
“Lance wanted to show off.” Pidge said bluntly.
“Hey! You helped!” Lance pouted.
“Yes, but only because the last time we let their musical culture develop by themselves we had to sit through welcoming hymns that sounded like someone shaking thousands of bees in a container accompanied by loud booms whenever we came back.”
“And we came back a lot,” Keith added.
Hunk had the decency to look sheepish. “I'm sorry?”
Lance patted him on the back. “It's okay buddy. All in the name of love and all that.”
“Right. Well, we’re leaving soon so it's time to pack up.” Shiro said with his dad voice. The rest of them groaned but obediently trudged back up to the makeshift stage.
Loop 1 (1)
“Okay what the quiznack is going on?” Hunk asked as he ran up to Pidge and Lance in the corridor outside the chemistry lab.
The two of them had their heads bent over with their foreheads almost touching and their expressions grave, their body language screaming that they wanted to be left alone. You could see their lips move but barely a whisper could be heard. Their discussion was obviously very serious and none of your fucking business.
Their faces broke out into relieved smiles as they looked up to see Hunk coming up to them.
“Hunk! You too?” Lance gasped. “Great! The whole gang’s here. Now we just gotta find Keith and Shiro.”
“Oh thank god.” Hunk sighed and placed a hand on his chest in relief. “I was afraid that I was gonna the only one flung here.”
The last thing that they'd remembered was falling through the corrupted wormhole before finding themselves back on Earth the day they crashed the simulation.
Hunk found himself waking up at the cafeteria in front of a tray of food (which he ate with much enthusiasm) during lunch completely confused.
Pidge and Lance woke up when their lecturer slapped a book against their heads in chemistry class.
“In any case I think we should get out of here and find Keith.” Pidge said.
“Wait wait wait not so fast.” Lance said. “If we really are back in time we need to prepare some supplies. Because there is no way I am going to endure space goo and only having two sets of clothes again.”
Hunk’s eyes lit up. “Oh yeah! That's a good idea! I almost forgot about that.” He whipped his phone and began typing out a list of things they'll need to bring.
Pidge gasped as if she suddenly remembered something. “Hey, do you think we'd be able to go into town and buy some stuff while we're at it?”
“Sure. It's not like we're going for any of our classes anymore, and we'd need to drop by to get down stuff anyway. Why?”
“There are no pads or tampons in space and space pads are uncomfortable.”
“...”
Lance cleared his throat. “Yeah.... you guys go do whatever. I'll go call my parents. Meet you guys at the hangar B in thirty minutes okay? And bring everything you're packing!”
Lance had already run off before either of them had a chance to reply.
Loop 89
Allura could not quite understand the humans. They were close she could tell and it helped that their piloting skills and teamwork was exceptionally good which made forming Voltron easy for them. Suspiciously so if you'd ask her but no matter, it was one less thing to concern herself with. She had bigger things to worry about.
Like the alarming number of ‘DVDs’ that flooded the lounge.
“What is the meaning of this?!” She yelled. She waded through the knee-high sea of DVD boxes before coming to stop in front of the paladins on the couch. “Shiro?” She crossed her arms.
Shiro looked up at her lazily as he lounged on the couch. The rest of the paladins were cuddled around him. Pidge had tucked herself under his chin while Hunk was leaning on his right shoulder. Keith was on the floor leaning against his legs while Lance was basically laying across Shiro and Hunk’s laps with his hand in Keith's hair.
Shiro blew a strand of Pidge’s hair away from his face before simply answering, “It's movie night.”
“First of all, it's noon. And second of all, why do you have all of these strewn about in such a mess? And why are there so many of them?!” Allura made a sweeping gesture emphasising her point.
“Yeah... we may have gone overboard with the shopping spree.” Pidge reluctantly admitted.
Lance sat up. “Hey princess! Why don't you join us? We're just about to start Golion!"
"Golion? What is that?"
"Just wait and see." Lance smirked and started slotted in the CD.
Safe to say, Allura was not amused.
Loop 1 (2)
Keith had woken up on a familiar lumpy couch with familiar aches in his back. He groggily beheld a familiar dusty ceiling with familiar cracks and familiar water stains on it.
His eyes drifted close before flying back open. He bolted up and took in the sight of a horribly familiar shack. His shack. The shack in the desert. The shack in the desert on Earth.
What.
The.
Fuck.
Everything looked just as he had left it. There wasn’t even an increase in the amount of dust and sand. Just as he was about to freak out internally and maybe externally, there was a heavy knock on the door.
“Hey mullet boy, open up!”
He recognised that voice anywhere. He ripped open the door to see Lance, Hunk and Pidge standing on his front porch surrounded by boxes and boxes of... stuff.
He tilted his head to get a better look of the brand printed on many of the boxes. “Is that forty boxes worth of Kotex?”
“Yes yes. Anyway,” Lance brushed off, “when I say Vol you say????”
“.... Tron?”
And then Lance proceeded to lose his shit.
Loop 101 BAND (2)
A huge festival was being held at a marketplace of a Galra-liberated planet hub. Hundreds of different kinds of aliens were bustling about in organised chaos. One group of aliens in particular, was standing around a holo-poster in a corner.
“Oh my god, you're here for the celebration concert too?!” One alien with blue tentacles for hair asked the others.
“Yeah! I got here like, two days ago,” the other shorter yellow alien with feather-like hair and razor sharp talon fingers said, “I've been waiting my whole life for this concert. Literally, I was born like twelve moon cycles ago.”
“ Oh em gee same. Who's your bias?” another alien, a pink glob with no discernible features asked excitedly.
“The yellow Paladin!” the two other aliens answered at the same time. They shared an excited look as they all started to squeal.
“He's so kind and compassionate and he's funny and sweet and so so cute.”
“I knooow he's so dreamy.”
“And he's so talented.”
“Okay okay, don't kill me, but I think the black Paladin might be my bias wreaker.”
“No shame. Everyone has a crush on Shiro. Everyone.”
A little way from the squealing fans was an insect looking alien sitting at a cafe drinking alkalai from a cup with a local from the planet. The local was a humanoid with pastel blue skin, flaming orange hair and had a third eye.
“Kids these days. They'll find anything attractive. Even those paladins with their strange eyes and their uglier ears,” the insect alien complained.
“That is true. In our culture, only having two eyes is a terrible handicap and I must say, the first time I saw them I was horrified but you weren't there when they drove the Galra off,” the local alien said patiently, “I was. They were an impressive sight. The blue paladin gunned down Galra drones like vampiric ice flies. And when they formed the legendary Voltron, I swear I felt tears in my eyes.”
There was a pause in their conversation as the teenagers across the street squealed again.
“You have a blue paladin poster stuck on your bedroom ceiling don't you.” The insect alien state with a sip of his alkali.
“Yes." The other alien said shamelessly, "Yes I do."
Loop 2
The desert shack was dead silent. Team Voltron had their arms crossed and were staring off into different directions. Right outside the window is a crashed Galra ship, the one Shiro escaped in.
“So, we're back here,” Pidge stated.
“Yes,” Hunk replied.
“Oh my god why? We saved the fucking universe! And we’re back at the start all over again!” Pidge screamed, “It's not fair! Haven't we done enough?!”
She violently slammed herself back into the couch and pressed her palms into her eyes. “I'm tired. I'm so, so tired.”
Hunk gathered her into his arms and patted her on the back comfortingly. “It's okay. It's going to be fine,” he said.
“Alright. So we didn't just go back in time,” Shiro said calmly.
“We’re probably stuck in a time loop since we're back at the start all over again,” Lance offered while rubbing his left leg.
“So what are we going to do now?” Keith asked.
Pidge groaned in frustration. “We know where the lions are and we know where my family is. Let's just go and get this over and done with.” She stood up, determination and frustration burning in her eyes. She stomped out of the shack, dust falling from the ceiling with each step.
Even with her tiny body right now she could make the ground shake, Shiro mused. Everyone else exchanged eye contact before dutifully following her out.
Loop 3
“Hey. Wake up.”
“Ugh I'm back here again,” Pidge groaned and swatted Lance’s hand away, burying her face deeper into the crook of her arm. “Just let me sleep forever.”
“Yeah yeah.”
Lance looked back up to where the lecturer writing something on the board. What was her name again? Well, it did not matter. It was not like they would be staying here for long anyway.
“So you wanna go meet up with the fam later?” he asked.
“Yeah. Sure. Whatever,” Pidge mumbled through her arm.
Loop 4
Keith was sitting on Lance’s bed when the Garrison students entered.
“Well this is new,” Lance said before flopping next to Keith.
Keith shrugged. “Didn't want to wait for you guys to show up.”
“Must've been a nice hike. How's your hip?” Hunk asked mildly.
“Shut the fuck up. We're not over ninety anymore. My hip’s fine,” Keith bit back.
“Whatever you say, old man,” Pidge teased.
“AUGH!”
Loop 6
The hologram of the red lion appeared before Keith. “And you Keith will pilot the Red lion,” Allura said.
From the corner of his eye, Keith could see Shiro suppress a yawn.
“Yeah I have a question,” Hunk raised his hand, “I mean, the lions choose us through like, personality and stuff so how do you know us well enough to assign us lions? You just met us!”
Allura blushed. “That isn't important right now. We need you to go find the rest of the lions and form Voltron. The universe depends on it.”
The team made a sound of agreement and grumbled incoherently as they trudged out of the control room.
“I swear if I take a shot every time someone says ‘form Voltron’,” Pidge grumbled.
Loop 7
When Keith woke up in his shack the first thing he heard was the screeching of tires. He got up to see Lance at the wheel of a stolen Garrison jeep with Hunk sitting shotgun and Pidge in the back. They were all wearing aviators.
Lance stuck his head out and flipped his aviators onto his head. “Get in loser we’re going shopping!”
Keith broke out into a face-splitting grin and jumped into the jeep.
A day later on the castle ship had all five paladins dressed head to toe in pink. Nothing's changed about their wardrobe, it was just pink.
Allura had a hard time assigning lions.
Loop 242 (1)
Of all the loops Hunk had been in, he had never actually been to Altea. How could he? It had been destroyed years before the loops began.
So when closed his eye in the previous loop only to open them on Altea instead of the familiar Garrison cafeteria, he felt the shock of his life.
His eyes bulged as he stared out into the city outside his window. Altea looked like a mix of Lothlórien from The Lord of the Rings and some Cyberpunk city.
In other words, it was gorgeous.
He ripped his eyes away from the stunning sight and reminded himself that he had more important things to worry about, that being finding the rest of the paladins.
Just as he was about to leave his room, he caught sight of himself in the mirror. He froze before launching himself at it.
“Holy cow!” he gasped, touching his reflection. He delicately touched his face before tentatively touching his ears. “I'm Altean!”
-----
“Okay, so we may not be in a time loop like we thought,” Pidge said with her arms crossed. She scratched her cheek which only drew attention to the green markings on her face.
Shiro blinked and mentally scolded himself for staring before he shifted his gaze to the rest of the team.
The five paladins were gathered in the Castle of Lion’s kitchen, which was at least almost like exactly the same as always, only with way more Alteans milling about. It seemed that breakfast time was over so there was less people in there.
They were all seated at the table with Shiro at the head. They were all dressed in typical Altean garb which corresponded to their usual colours. Five plates of square looking food (huh turns out Alteans don't eat food goop all the time) were set out in front of them but they took no notice.
“We might have actually been going through alternate realities that were similar to our original. So we're following the multiple universe theory in this case. In which every possible reality can and will exist,” Lance concluded thoughtfully.
“Wow Lance. I didn't know you had it in you,” Keith said.
“I read! And besides, I like science fiction. Hundred over loops and you still don't know me that well,” Lance tsked.
“It's not loops anymore, it's alternate realities,” Hunk reminded him.
“Yeah but loops are so much easier to say,” Lance argued, “I know! We can call these variant realities loopdeeloops!”
“Nuh-uh.” Hunk shook his head.
“Nope,” Pidge shut down.
“That sounds dumb.,” Keith said.
“All right enough,” Shiro cut them off, “And Lance, we can't use loopdeeloop because it's the name of a level in Super Mario Galaxy.”
“...”
“How do you even know that?” Pidge hissed.
Shiro shrugged. “I play video games in my spare time.”
Just then an Altean lady with a long brown braid came bursting into the kitchen. She had blue markings, which seemed to be the most common colour, and was wearing the... Blue paladin armour.
“Oh, hey! I'm sorry. Is there any breakfast left?” she asked.
“Sure,” Pidge said, stunned but sliding her plate across the table to her.
“Thank you,” she said cheerfully and scarfed the food down her throat. “How's it goin’ Shiro?”
“Fine, caught some guards slacking off last night. Nothing much,” Shiro said automatically.
He blinked.
How did he know that? Oh wait, he was a captain of the guards in the Castle of Lions. Suddenly, information about his life as an Altean until this point came flooding into his head. Unlike the flashbacks he had experienced before, this felt like suddenly recalling a memory from your childhood or something you thought you had long forgotten.
“You need to lighten up a little,” the Altean blue paladin teased while waving her spork at him. She stuffed the last of the square food into her mouth. “Well I've got to go, Zarkon wants us to train more and I'm late. See you!”
She was barely out the door before Shiro turned to the rest of the team. “Did you guys feel that?”
“You mean suddenly receiving memories of living this life? Yes,” Keith replied.
“That never happened before,” Hunk said slowly.
“Well up till now, we've been in realities where everything was just about exactly the same so of course, it wouldn't have happened before. Or maybe the changes were so subtle we didn't notice it,” Pidge thought out loud, “These memories are probably from the ‘us’ that have been living here until now.”
“Our ‘loopdeeloop memories’ if you will,” Lance added.
“Lance,” Keith deadpanned.
“Yes?”
“Shut up.”
Loop 1 (3)
“So this is the plan,” Pidge explained while pointing at the map on Keith’s conspiracy cork board, “When Shiro crash lands near the Garrison, Keith will get him out on his hovercraft like the last time. Only now the three of us will already be in the Blue lion’s cave. He’ll meet us at the entrance and then we'll help him get Shiro into the lion. After that, Lance’ll fly us out. Any questions?”
“Yeah, will arriving on Arus a day early affect anything? I mean, the more we change things the less we know what's gonna happen,” Lance brought up.
Pidge rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “That’s true.”
“Well, nothing's really going all that wrong at the beginning so I say we stick as closely to what happened as possible until we get out lions,” Hunk suggested.
“I can work with that,” Keith agrees.
“Sounds good to me.” Lance nods his head.
Pidge clapped her hands once. “Alright! Now that we've got that out of the way, we should go load up the Blue lion with our cargo.”
“What?” Lance whined. “We still have tomorrow to do that!”
“Nope, we have a timeline to follow and lugging around cargo will slow us down. Right now we have hours before sunset to get all of that stuff down there.”
Lance wanted to argue but struggled to find fault in that logic. “Urgh. Fine. Let's go.”
“Look at you, cargo pilot. Finally being responsible,” Keith teased.
“Keith.”
“Yes?”
“Shut up.”