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[oratorical]

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[heartofalioness]

[There's definitely a note of calm pride that comes through the link now.]

Thank you. My father worked hard to create them.

[oratorical]

How do they work?

[Because sure, she'd seen images, and Allura said they were used for defense, but Leia has Many Questions here.]

[heartofalioness]

To put it simply, they choose and form bonds with paladins- pilots, if you will- in order to guide them and to unlock their powers. I think the closest equivalent here would be riding these... horses; the lion can move on its own accord, but with a paladin its full potential is unlocked. And when those paladins have a strong enough bond between each other, they're also able to combine their lions to form Voltron.

[oratorical]

Incredible. Even more so that as machinery, they're able to form bonds. Not that the droids where I'm from can't, but the bonds they form aren't like this, and they're still largely machine.

[heartofalioness]

Honestly, I'd be more surprised if there were more machines out there with their level of sapience. There's a reason I was so surprised to find the ones in the desert.

[oratorical]

They weren't able to come with you here, were they?

[heartofalioness]

Unfortunately no. It would have been hard to find a place to put them here anyway, especially since the Castle of Lions didn't come with my arrival. Ah well, at least the paladins were able to procure a very nice house before I arrived.

[oratorical]

You were able to find people you know here?

[There's a bit of relief behind Leia's words, because she can imagine how it feels to be dropped here with no one you know, and it's not a feeling she wants to ever have. She knows there are plenty of people here where that's the case, and that she's one of the most fortunate ones to have so many people from her galaxy that she gets along decently with here, so she can't help but feel for those without people here for them.]

But, I can understand that feeling. No ships from my galaxy made their way here, despite so many of us being here in Verens.

[heartofalioness]

I was; apparently all five of my paladins had been brought here before me, as well as one of our Galra allies.

I suppose living beings are easier to bring over than non-sapient machines and vehicles.

[Not to mention it'd defeat the purpose of being brought here to help this planet if you automatically gave them a way to escape.]

[oratorical]

[Look if it brought the Falcon, the hyperdrive probably wouldn't even work anyway.

But of what Allura said, one word in particular there catches Leia's attention. Galra. She'd heard that before, from someone else here.]

Is one of your paladins named Hunk, by any chance?

[heartofalioness]

Oh! Yes he is, have you met then?

[oratorical]

Yes, I've spoken with him before. We discussed space travel.

[and other things. But it was nice to meet someone else who had experience with it and wasn't from her galaxy.]

[heartofalioness]

[More of that pride comes through the link, some mix between a commandeer to her soldiers and a big sister to her younger sibling.]

He's quite smart, isn't he? He's the paladin of the Yellow Lion. You wouldn't happen to know Keith, Pidge, Lance, or Shiro as well, would you?

[oratorical]

[That first mix of pride, that's something Leia's felt before, she knows it well. And the both of them together give Leia an idea just how close Allura must be to her paladins.]

I've met someone by the name of Shiro, and another who mentioned someone named Pidge, but regrettably I didn't get his name.

[heartofalioness]

[Maybe another mental picture will help.]

Shiro is paired with the Black Lion, and the leader of the paladins. Pidge is bonded to the Green Lion. Do either of the other two look familiar?

[oratorical]

[It does help. Because while Keith didn't give his name, his first broadcast was image, so she knows what he looks like.]

Shiro, and the man in red are the two I've spoken with, aside from Hunk.

[heartofalioness]

That's Keith; as you can see he's the Red Paladin.

[Because THIS version of Voltron is rebellious in having the paladin's armor match the lion they pilot 100%.]

[oratorical]

Keith, then.

[she'll remember it, in case she runs into him again at some point.]

The both of them also asked about ships and space flight. It's not common to find people here from other universes where spacetravel is capable of sending someone further than their planet's moon.

[heartofalioness]

Let alone farther than their own solar system, for that matter. Apparently before the Blue Lion brought the Paladins to my castle, humans in my world had only started visiting one of their more distant dwarf planet's moons in person.

[And Leia gets a sketchier version of this model of Earth's solar system. More planets or dwarf planets may or may not have been added to this diagram, but the important part is the distance between Earth and Pluto, which stand out a little more in the image.]

[oratorical]

[It's one of the more remarkable distances for someone not from her galaxy, but to Leia's eye, it's still short. She knows that at some point, space travel had to be that undeveloped back home, but it's been hundreds of thousands of years, and it's hard to imagine anything from before space travel was as widespread as it is now.]

It still seems lonely to me. There's a lot of the galaxy they haven't seen, I'm sure.

[heartofalioness]

True. Not to mention apparently theirs might be the only life-bearing planet in their solar system. Perhaps when we're done with our mission, we can introduce their world to the rest of the universe.

[oratorical]

[It's her wording, and her comment about the castle from before that gives Leia a better picture of just how Allura might fit in to the galaxy she's from.]

Altea clearly isn't a country from Earth, then, is it?

[heartofalioness]

[There's a tiny chuckle there but... for some reason there's a little less light to it than there should be even then.] Definitely not. It was its own planet, and in a solar system VERY far from Earth's even on a universal scale.

[oratorical]

[She catches that "was," but she doesn't comment on it. Not yet, because she doesn't quite know why that past tense is there, and she doesn't know if it's appropriate to comment on it.]

There's not even a planet named Earth anywhere in the galaxy I'm from. What's Altea like?

[heartofalioness]

[There's definitely noticeable melancholy over the link now, an ache that might feel familiar to Leia.]

Beautiful, technologically advanced... naturally dangerous, but it taught us we could overcome anything with creativity and teamwork. It meant we got along well with other planets as well. As I said, my father built the Lions of Voltron in order to protect and defend others, and to keep peace between worlds.