"Sendak's fleet is entering the atmosphere! I—" Allura's voice is urgent and panicked. "You'll have to figure it out as you go; your Lions know what to do. I'll give you cover from the castle's defence systems for as long as I can. Good luck, paladins." 

"Right! Let's go, then!" Nuray says, already heading for her Lion.

Shiro gets into his own Lion and leads them out to meet the attackers. They're safe behind the castle's energy shield for now, but it won't hold forever under the barrage raining down on them. 

"Listen up, Team Voltron," Shiro says over the comms.

"The only way to succeed is to give it all you've got! This looks bad, but we can do this! Are you with me?"

"Yeah!"

"Sure."

"Let's do this already." 

"Uh. Do what? I dunno about you guys but I don't see a 'form Voltron' button anywhere on my dashboard," Pidge babbles. 

"Lion?" he asks.

The Blue Lion's response is wordless, as usual, but nevertheless gives a definite impression of 'figure it out yourselves'. 

"Apparently we need to solve this for ourselves."

"Probably some kind of simul thing? Is there a big obvious button we all have - "

"How about the one that makes them go," Keith suggests sarcastically. 

As if to punctuate his words, a particularly strong blast hits the forcefield with a boom, making it flicker. 

"Even if we don't have Voltron yet, we can still fight," Shiro declares. "Everyone, form up on me. Let's go get 'em!" 

The Black Lion heads for the edge of the forcefield at a run, the Red and Green Lions falling in at its right and left sides. 

Yellow and Blue fall in behind Red and Green. Nuray's turning her people-reading abilities to her leader, trying to anticipate him like she anticipates Akira - Akira's less good at falling in sync with random people, but if he's in sync with her and she's in sync with the others...

Team's important, after all, and they're not going to get out of this playing lone cowboys.

The five of them burst through the forcefield in a ragged V-formation and take to the sky. Almost immediately, though, any attempt at staying in formation is abandoned as Galra fighters swoop in to harass them and everyone has to dodge and roll to avoid taking fire. 

"Can't they just stop shooting at us for one minute so we can figure this out?" Pidge grumbles. "Is that too much to ask?"

Yes. It is. 

It disrupts Nuray a bit - but she gets back on track, focusing, her attention splitting briefly between her leader and worrying about Akira - she needs to focus more on her leader -

He's okay. She's got this, and he's got her - he can read her even if he can't read anyone else, and they've always been in sync -

Nuray takes a deep breath -

And calms down, recentering herself.

Time to focus.

And then...things get a little bit weird.

The five of them—no, the ten of them—are all connected, with one singular focus and goal: forming Voltron and defeating the Galra. In a previously unused portion of their minds, each paladin becomes aware of an unfurling web of lights, linking lions and paladins alike. From inside the cockpits, it's hard to see exactly what's going on as the lions reshape and join together, but the end result...

...is unmistakeably Voltron. 

Standing several times taller than the Black Lion, the man-shaped (or possibly Altean-shaped) giant robot has a Lion for each arm and leg, with Black forming its torso and head. Although each limb is controlled separately by its own paladin, their new level of connection will let Voltron fight as a single entity.  

"Holy crap." 

"Language!" Shiro responds, fast enough that it's probably instinctive. He sounds a little dazed. 

"Wow wow wow wow -" Nuray says, words tumbling over themselves. This is so cool - she pokes Akira, delighted.