The Yellow Lion lands next to Green and Blue with a thump.

It sends Nuray an image of a fluffy yellow lion with two lion cubs dangling from its mouth, one yellow and one black. 

She starts choking on her laughter.

"Ah - sorry - Yellow's sending me funny stuff."

"It...talks to you? That must be strange." 

Shiro starts picking himself up off the floor. He seems to have pretty much recovered. 

"Not words so far, just images. Apparently Akira and Pidge are kind of like lion cubs."

"It showed you Akira and Pidge as lion cubs?" he repeats. "How could you tell it was them?" 

"Hair color? - Which probably giant Lion can't see actually, but why was - "

"Hey wait it was referring to us!"

He chuckles at Nuray's indignation. 

"Well, they are over ten thousand years old," he points out as they head down the ramp and into the castle. "I'm not surprised we look like cubs to them."

"Guess so."

She pats the wall. "Thanks for looking out for us, Yellow."

The Lion purrs in Nuray's mind, a warm, comforting rumble. 

When the two of them return to the central control room at the top of the tower, everyone else is waiting for them. 

"Oh, good, you're back. Did you have much trouble finding the Yellow Lion?" 

"The Galra had found the planet first, which means they know we have Yellow."

"Ah, bad luck!" Coran says. "We've had...well, a mixture of good luck and bad, really." 

"I've figured out why I couldn't locate the Red Lion," Allura explains. "It's already been found by the Galra." 

She brings up the coordinate map again with its glowing spots, zooming in on the area where all four of the other lions are gathered. The Red Lion isn't far away. "The good news, if we can call it that, is that it's aboard the Galra cruiser orbiting this planet, Arus. It turns out Coran's time estimate was...a little off." 

"Yeah that's kind of a lot off. What can we do?"

Allura looks at Shiro, who's pulled an aura of military authority around himself like armour. 

"The Galra know we have the Yellow and Blue Lions, but they don't know we have the Green as well. Akira, Nuray, you'll be our distraction. Keep their attention—and their weapons—pointed your way, while the rest of us use the Green Lion to sneak aboard that cruiser."

"Will do."

"Right."

"By the way, whatever happened to the pod you two borrowed?" Coran asks Shiro and Nuray. "Safe and sound in the Yellow Lion's cargo bay, I trust?" 

She starts laughing awkwardly. "We, ah, kind of couldn't get it to Yellow, so used it to block the Galra from following us?"

"You left Altean technology in the hands of the Galra? I suppose we should be lucky you didn't leave the Lion behind instead."

"It was that or get shot at more! We needed to run, and the pod wouldn't fit down the tunnel in the first place."

A beeping holographic panel pops up, distracting Allura from whatever reply she was about to make. 

"We'll discuss this later," she says crisply as she turns to deal with the beeping. 

The panel enlarges into a video transmission that takes up most of a wall. In the frame are the head and shoulders of an alien with purple fur and large fluffy cat ears, dressed in a red-and-black uniform. His right eye is a cybernetic-looking prosthesis. 

"I am Commander Sendak of the Galra Empire," he declares. "I come on behalf of Emperor Zarkon, Lord of the Known Universe. I am here to confiscate the Voltron lions. Turn them over to me—or I will destroy your planet." 

The transmission ends without giving them a chance to respond. 

"Did they just hang up on us?!"

"...I mean obviously we aren't doing the thing but how does he expect to get his answer?"