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Lord Zarkon was going over security footage of the last Voltron raid on an outpost near the planet Swleanthe, when a druid reached out and stoped the video entirely. The entire security team swiveled to watch as Lord Zarkon unleashed a fury upon the poor druid who dare to disrupt the process of their Lord.
“The Paladins are not speaking the same language.” The druid pointed out, enhancing the screen to zoom in on the Blue Paladin’s mouth. “Watch as they speak, the movement of the mouth.”
The Blue Paladin was shooting in the rear, covering the distant waves of enemies and checking the rear every minute or so. The druid rewinded the video a moment and the words from the mouth of the Blue Paladin were “Watch your six!”
Then the druid rewound the video a few more seconds, so that the Green Paladin said the exact same thing to the Yellow one. The mouth moved differently, even the duration of the sentence was a little off between the two.
“They might be speaking different dialects, turn off the translator in the video.” Lord Zarkon commanded, watching closely.
The Paladins were not speaking different dialects, the five were speaking to each other in languages so diverse that only a universal translator could be behind their communication. The Blue and Yellow Paladins had a smooth rolling language, ups and downs merging together quick and fast. The Black and Red Paladin's language was more pitched, syllables clearer and more distinct, with less full mouth movement. The Green Paladin spoke the harshest, with hard ticks against softer short bursts, their mouth opened the widest when talking.
Lord Zarkon was taken aback, he had thought these paladins all were from the same race of aliens but clearly he was wrong. Must be from the same system then, closely related but with different mixes between them. The disguisement between each was most likely the color of each, maybe the hair on their heads? “Look at the universal translator, see how many languages are being spoken.”
The security officer barked an order and a lower guard got right on it, with the information coming to them a moment later. “Six languages are being spoken in this video, Glaran being one of them.” The security guard relayed, “the other languages that are detected are unknown to us, but are different languages in their entirety.”
Interesting. Lord Zarkon smiled, because this was much too easy.
The old Paladins had, just in case, all learned the easy vocals of Galran just in case the universal translators were damaged or jammed. It was incredibly rare for other alien species to learn a whole new language for communication purposes when universal translators were widely available and easy to construct. So it would be incredibly easy to destroy the new Paladins with just a simple jammer, the team would destroy itself underneath the lack of communication. Why had nobody caught this before? It was so simple!
“Outfit the outer bases with translator jammers, instruct everyone to use them when Voltron attacks. The Black Lion is so close, all we need to to eliminate their communications, Voltron will be rightfully ours!”
The guards all saluted, with a low rumbling cheer going through the crowd before him, and Zarkon turned and smiled as he walked back to his spot on the observation deck.
This would be such a sweet victory.
--
The Galra base near the asteroid belt between three circling systems (nicknamed Tri-Belt) was hit next, the base being alerted when the little hacker of Voltron accidentally slipped and tripped a firewall.
The system shut down immediately, and the other Paladins showed themselves as they bid a hasty retreat. The Galra went into panic mode and slammed the jammer on the translators as they were told by upper command.
The following was like nothing the Galra command had been expecting.
A security feed, later on, would show Red and Blue Paladin screaming as they continued to lay waste to their troops.
--
Pidge cursed as the firewall tripped, and immediately got on the coms and told everyone to run, escape back to the green and red lion they all had come in. An affirmative came from everyone, each paladin relaying their positions so they could group up and leave safer.
Pidge was closer to Hunk and Shiro, but Lance was closer to Keith so they decided that Keith would take Lance and Pidge would take the other two.
Halfway through Shiro explaining that the Galra in the west side of this base were on some kind of lunch rotation when suddenly he was speaking Japanese. The team was taken slightly aback, and then the communication line turned into a clusterfuck of who the hell knew what was going on.
The five voices overlayed each other in the messiest kind of voice overs, with not one of the Paladins understanding what was happening for a moment.
“Guys! Guys!” Shiro’s voice cut across the confusion as it always did. “English!”
“Holy shit you have a really thick accent!” was Lance’s incredibly helpful addition, it was however, an addition in the aforementioned English language.
“Yes?” Shiro’s voice is genuinely confused. “I’m Japanese Lance, English is my second language.”
“I want to know when all of us apparently decided not to speak English anymore?” Hunk grunted through the helmets (the distant sound of gunfire told everyone else he was either fighting or running, and considering the tank like nature of Hunk himself it was probably fighting and talking to keep calm). “Because I switched to Samoan like week two after I realized that Lance’s sleep Spanish was making sense.”
“I accidentally switched when I was talking with Coran.” Pidge admits, “Like day three, and he didn't seem to even notice that suddenly I was talking in German! I’ll admit it was more a science experiment that anything else.” They pack up their computer and begin to move out to Shiro’s location.
A quick look in the hallways and Pidge strolls out, casually as ever and continuing to check around corners as they walked.
“I’ve been speaking Spanish since, like, day two when Keith suddenly was retaliating against my insults.” Lance laughed, sounding excited to know that he wasn’t the only one on the team sharking their language. “I knew he didn’t speak Spanish in the Garrison, and it wasn't likely he learned in, like, half a year.”
“For that you don’t get to ride with me back to the Castle.” Keith grumbled good naturedly, “I’ll speak Korean to you the whole way, just to piss you off.” A grunt from Keith, him having found his own set of Galra robots to fight.
“Is that was that was? Thought it was Chinese for a little bit there.” Hunk laughs. “Didn’t know you were Korean Keith, thought you were Galra?”
“Oh my god.” Keith groans as everyone else laughs at the jibe. “Half! I’m Half!”
“So spill,” Lance stops laughing for a moment, “How often do you speak Korean?”
“Not often.” Keith admits, rolling away from a swipe to his ribs and kicking out at the robot soldier in front of him. “Just when I get stressed or really upset. I didn’t know nobody else was speaking English until like twenty seconds ago.”
“I’ve been speaking Japanese this whole time?” Shiro questions, a little confused. “I did not know anyone was speaking not Japanese.” He laughs at himself, “I mean ever since like I woke up on Earth I’ve not spoke english in like, months at this point.”
“What?” Pidge’s voice echoes faintly, they had found Shiro and the two of them were face to face so the com lines pick up both at once. “Even on earth you were speaking Japanese?”
“Yes? I never actually questioned why we weren’t speaking English, just assumed that everyone had learned it somehow, highly suspected Pidge and Lance of being weeaboos.”
Lance sputters indignantly at the accusation, but Pidge just laughs.
Pidge and Shiro begin to walk to try and find Hunk, the two of them using the stealth approach and just follow the sound of gunfire.
“You most likely have a translator in your arm, there is a lot of tech in there I haven't gotten around to truly inspecting yet.” Pidge pokes at the metal hand and Shiro flexes it for them. “I know we have some kind of translator in the Castle and in our Lions, so most likely the galra are blocking the translation from reaching us, or jamming the signal.”
The two turn a corner and see Hunk engaging in what looks like the most complicated food/gunfight that has ever taken place in a mess hall before. Pidge activated their bayard and jumps right in, screaming happily as purple food goop gets deflected off their shield along with a blast from a standard Galra rifle. Shiro sighs like the long suffering dad he was, and jumped into the fray to make sure his children didn’t get hurt.
“You can tell when someone is being translated you know.” Lance adds absentmindedly as he looks around for Keith. “You look at their mouth and it’s slightly out of sync, like a bad anime dub.”
“Wow, you are a weeb.” Keith deadpans, “for simply noticing that.”
“Oh like you never watched anime’s when you were younger.” Lance rolls his eyes as he takes out two patrolling soldiers with headshots as he strolls along the hallways. “Let me guess? You were a mecha kinda kid?”
“Dead wrong.” Keith sounds smug, “Yugioh was where my anime journey began.”
A groan all around from the other four and Keith turns red in the face as he’s running a sword through the torso of a Galra Robot. “What’s wrong with YuGiOh!?”
The conversation turns into an anime one, then Shiro cuts in with dubed or subed, and the conversation gets even more heated.
Lance finds Keith in the middle of a hanger and he begins to snipe at the ones surrounding the Red Paladin. The two get into a very in depth discussion about the quality of Korean love dramas versus Spanish telenovelas.
Hunk gives the affirmative that he was ready to roll, and all Green Team had to do was actually leave the base. Lance affirms that he heard the change in position and then starts to speak, in Spanish, about how telenovelas were the superior form of soap opera and that Keith could stick the love drama’s up his own asshole.
Keith, knowing that his dramas were being insulted, began to scream in Korean about how Lance could take his overacted shit and eat it.
The two get into a screaming fit at each other. A totally useless screaming fit about television that neither had watched in months at this point, it wasn't an actual argument, but more of a friendly disagreement.
Lance hops down from his sniping position and begins to melee fight his way to Keith. Keith sees the movement and begins to move to Lance so that both of them could get out together and move to the Red Lion.
They fought perfectly together, moving like fluid, but still were screaming in different languages about soap operas.
It was very interesting to watch.
Keith would cover the short range attackers, keeping them back and killing the ones who got bold enough to try and move in the circle the two had created, all the while talking about how the subtle storytelling and foreshadowing was clearly the better way to watch dramas between two well developed characters!
Lance was sniping the robots in the back, keeping the numbers down and shielding when a stray laser got too close to the two as they were moving to get out, his own conversation loud and proud about the distinct culture around the pure works of art that the modern operas he watched were, how long lived the programs were and how the following behind the show was sometimes better than the show itself!
Neither understood the other entirely, but that was fine, they were having fun and getting to where they needed to go.
When the two finally reached the hangar doors, Lance gripped Keith tight and they both jumped, screaming in English again about how they both should trade shows to watch.