"We didn't see anyone. The blue lion was just - in a cave, on our home planet."

"Your home planet?"

She peers at Akira. "None of you are Altean! I suppose that explains why your ears are all so..." She hesitates, clearly self-censoring. "Strange." Her own ears are large and pointed, like an elf's, and there are two small pink half-moon shapes on her cheeks, just below each eye. 

"Where are we?" she demands. "Is this your planet? How did you find me?" 

"We're on - I don't know which planet. The blue lion took us here, and then there were lights leading to this room."

"None of this makes sense." 

The woman heads towards the central pedestal. "I've got to find out where we are...and how long I've been asleep." She presses her hands to the panels at either side, and it lights up with glowing holograms, flickering a little at first.

"Look, why don't you tell us who you are, and we'll help you figure out what happened," Shiro suggests. 

Distracted, she looks up from the console. "I am Princess Allura, of Altea. And you?"

"Captain Takashi Shirogane, from Earth." 

"Pidge Gunderson, also of Earth."

He peers over the top of the console. "Can you show me how this thing works?" 

"Nuray Uzun, of Earth."

"Akira Suzuki, Earth. I was the one flying the blue lion."

Shiro has to nudge Keith before he introduces himself. 

"Uh, Keith. Also from Earth." 

"Keith was the one who found the lion," Shiro adds, with a hint of pride in his voice. 

"None of us really know much about other planets. It was only recently that Earth found out we weren't alone in the universe." 

"I wonder how the Blue Lion can have ended up in such a place," Allura muses. "Perhaps—"

She's cut off by the sound of the second tube activating. 

The alien inside continues the theme of 'surprisingly human, but with elf ears and face markings'. He's fairer-skinned than Allura, with bright orange hair and blue half-moons on his cheeks. He's wearing a navy, black and white outfit with paler blue shoulder pads, not dissimilar to epaulettes, that give it a military look. 

Unlike Allura, he's awake instantly, springing out of the tube to land on his feet. "Enemy combatants!" he cries as he spots the humans in the room. "Prepare to face—aaaaugh!" 

His legs buckle under him, and he flails for balance. 

"We're not enemies! Are you okay?" 

She's a bit too far to catch him if he falls right away, unfortunately, but she jogs over anyways.

"Perfectly fine!" he insists, regaining his composure and dusting himself down. 

"Why, if I hadn't had a case of the old sleep-chamber legs, you'd have been the ones in trouble, let me tell you!"

"We're not here to fight you guys?"

"Precisely what an enemy would say, to lure me into a false sense of security!" 

"You can relax, Coran. I think they're telling the truth." Allura doesn't look entirely convinced, though.

"They say they're from an uncontacted planet, one that's never even heard of Alteans or the Galra. And they did bring us the Blue Lion. Our enemies would have taken it straight to Zarkon."

She says the name as though she's met its bearer, and came away bitterly disappointed. 

"The lion wanted to come here. So here we came."

"The lions...Alfor and the others must have succeeded in hiding them!" Coran exclaims. "Where did you say you found it, again?" 

"In a cave on our planet."

"I just don't understand what happened. Father should be here..." Allura is back at the console, manipulating the holograms with delicate sweeps of her fingers.

"...oh."

She stares at the unintelligible writing on the screen with horror. "Oh, Coran. We've been asleep for ten thousand years!"

Coran moves to stand beside Allura, putting a hand on her shoulder. The holograms continue to flick through a stream of data, all of it unreadable to the humans but clearly all too meaningful to the two aliens.

"Princess...I'm so sorry." 

"I'm sorry, too. We - couldn't have gotten here sooner, but that's - I'm sorry."