Battle of the Minds

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Battle of the Minds

The following is a story of Voltron I made up based on the T.V. cartoon Voltron by World Events Productions. I did not have World Events Productions' permission to do the story and therefore it does not have World Events Productions' endorsement.

When Merla's vulture as a robeast had caused Vehicle Voltron's blazing sword to fall, it plummeted to the ground and pierced the dirt just in front of a lone rider on horseback. It was Sven! He was dressed in his black Voltron force uniform.

The horse had been so startled that it went over backward with Sven on him! Sven had fallen off and hit the ground first and then rolled out of the way before the horse would have come crashing down over him. Instead the horse hit nothing but ground and then soon was up on his feet again and galloping away, back toward the castle.

Sven was up and on his own feet even sooner. Ginger's red falcon was just ahead of him, but he didn't go racing for it right away. He paused a while to go through an ancient meditation ritual he had once learned from his mom. He closed his eyes and held his hands flat together in prayer formation. Then he used his left hand, keeping it in vertical position as it had been in prayer formation, and drew a cross in the air passing from his head to his chest and then from right shoulder to left shoulder. Then he opened his eyes. Back at Castle Control, he had heard that the robeast was reading people's thoughts. Through the power of meditation, Sven was keeping his thoughts blocked from being read. But the whole spill he had with the horse had disrupted his meditation and he had to do it over again. Then Sven dashed to get to Ginger's red falcon. He had rode out on the horse to see if he could help just after everyone at Castle Control had seen Ginger's ship slammed to the ground and they couldn't make contact with her.

Sven entered the red falcon and saw Ginger alive but unconscious. He didn't know the extent of her injuries, but he decided it'd be safer to move her then to leave her in the ship he was going to fly. Sven carefully picked Ginger up, cradling her in his arms. It wasn't the best way to move her, but it'd be one of the fastest. He carried her out of the ship and over to a cave which he entered. He walked a ways into the cave to find a safe looking place for her. Then he saw torch light appear that must have been from someone coming toward him from around a corner. As they came closer to each other, Sven saw it was a band of about ten people who had fled to the cave when the robeast had showed up.

Sven lowered Ginger to the ground just in front of them. It was dark, and in his black uniform they missed recognizing who he was. They didn't know Sven by voice either.

"Please take care of her," was all Sven said and then turned and ran to leave the cave. Once outside, he hurried into the red falcon and took off.

During the time Sven had been approaching the battle scene on horseback, the robeast hadn't picked up on his thoughts and hadn't seen him coming. He even knew of the people in the cave below and all their thoughts. But he ignored them, and any harm to them wouldn't serve as any advantage to the robeast. Destroying Voltron was his present soul purpose. There was a moment just after Vehicle Voltron had dropped its sword that the robeast thought he felt the presence of someone else's thoughts he hadn't detected before, but then they were gone as if they hadn't existed in the first place. The vulture then thought no more about it.

After Sven took off in the red falcon, he let go of his focus on his meditation and let it continue or not continue as whatever it would. His energies were now needed for battle tactics which were counterproductive with the type of meditation he'd been using.

The robeast was again sensing the thoughts of someone else who wasn�t there before. But he was having trouble making sense of the thoughts. They were cutting in and out like a really bad radio reception without the sound of static. Then the robeast finally spotted Sven. He didn't have to read Sven's thoughts to know exactly what he'd try to do. The robeast took some of his attention off the two Voltrons to concentrate more fire power on blasting the red falcon out of the sky. Sven was the best navigator the Galaxy Alliance had ever had, and he hadn't lost his touch. He was able to dodge almost all of what the robeast threw at him. The shots that hit him didn't cause damage. Sven's meditation finally faded away completely and the vulture could clearly read all his thoughts. But it didn't matter. No sooner had the vulture read Sven's thought, and Sven was already doing what he was thinking. The robeast just couldn't get ahead of him because except for knowing that he was going to connect up with Voltron, Sven wasn't thinking ahead. He was living the battle in the present and reacting to all that was happening moment by moment. Finally the robeast tried what brought the red falcon down the first time and tried slamming himself into the lone Voltron unit. Sven's navigation skills were almost as though he saw trouble happening before it happened. He saw the robeast coming and moment by moment he did what needed to be done to completely dodge the robeast.

Then Sven flew away from the giant bird that had been left behind to regain control of itself after using so much force only to miss its target altogether. Sven then joined up with Vehicle Voltron, attaching the red falcon on the front of the mighty robot's chest.

"Ginger?" questioned Jeff incredulously over the com. " I thought you were at least injured."

"Guess again. It's Sven!" revealed Sven. "Ginger is injured, but I think she'll be OK. She's in good hands. But let's finish off this robeast qvick so ve can get her some medical care back at the castle."

"We've got more power and stronger capabilities now that the red falcon's attached, but we've got to get the blazing sword," informed Jeff. Then he ordered, "Power dive!"

As Vehicle Voltron headed head first for the ground at an angle, the robeast was still recovering from missing Sven. Then Voltron's right hand swept by the handle of the blazing sword and grabbed it.

Keith saw Vehicle Voltron going for the sword and ordered, "Form blazing sword!"

Lion Voltron then also had its blazing sword at about the same time Vehicle Voltron did.

"Read these thoughts!" said Jeff angrily to himself as if he were talking to the robeast, and in a way he was. Then he said, "Keith, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

Though it would have been wise to check for sure that they were thinking the same thing, they just went with their instincts that they were thinking the same thing. The two Voltrons charged the robeast. The vulture opened his wings wide and feathers shot out from under them. The feathers stuck to the Voltrons and began to eat right into the mighty robots. Pidge reported to Keith what the feathers were doing, and Pidge's brother Chip on the Vehicle Voltron reported to Jeff what was happening. Neither Jeff or Keith stopped their charge. The Voltrons converged on the robeast both at once with Lion Voltron slicing off the vulture's left wing and Vehicle Voltron slicing off the right.

The wings came off the monstrous bird and fell together toward the ground. There was no exploding except where the slicing occurred, but by the time the wings had fallen away, the exploding stopped, leaving the hapless robeast hovering in the air without wings.

"Let's get to the heart of the matter with this robeast," said Jeff as he flew Voltron back to make a charge for the robeast intending to plunge the blazing sword right through the bird's center.

Just then Allura had spotted Merla as a lone figure standing on a high plateau. Using lion sensors, she focused the image in closer and saw it was indeed Merla standing there solemnly with tears streaming from her proud angry eyes.

Jeff abruptly halted his charge, completely baffled as to why Keith wanted him to stop.

"What's wrong, Keith?" Jeff asked. "Are your sensors detecting something that ours aren't?"

"We can't destroy that robeast," answered Keith. "We've got to find a way to save it."

"Keith we know now that it's Merla's vulture," spoke up Pidge. "But, there's no way we can return him back to normal. As long as he's a threat, we've got to destroy him."

The weaponry augmentations all began to disappear as the robeast was suddenly rapidly shrinking. Then it began to fall toward the ground, far, far below. Also, the feathers that had been eating their way into both Voltrons suddenly just dropped out of their spots and fell away.

"Keith . . ., " requested Allura in a pleading sorrowful way without finishing her thought.

"All right, Allura," answered Keith sympathetically, knowing what she wanted to request. "De-activate interlocks and disengage."

The lions then separated from Voltron. Allura dived blue lion where she had seen the wings fall together. Her lion sensors picked up on them as they were still falling. She scooped blue lion down by them and carefully picked them from the air in blue lion's mouth long before they would have hit the ground. She landed blue lion in a crouching position with its head resting on the ground. Then she easily retrieved the wings from where they were resting safely in the lion's mouth. Also she had landed close by where she had seen the body of the vulture fall. From there she walked beyond the forest clearing she was in and out onto the same high plateau where she had seen Merla. The sight she bore there was heartbreaking to Allura. Tears immediately began streaming from her eyes. There was Merla kneeling on the ground cradling her vulture's seemingly lifeless body in her arms and openly sobbing. Merla was a mind reader, a skill she had learned from muses. She looked directly at Allura soon after the Queen of Arus had walked out into the open from the cover of the trees.

Merla had quit sobbing at the sight of Allura and was silently glaring at the queen with intense hatred. Even Merla's tears had stopped flowing. Despite the remorse and care for Merla that Allura's thoughts expressed, the Queen of Darkness felt nothing but contempt for her.

Tears continued streaming from Allura's eyes as she approached closer and closer to Merla with the wings resting in her hands outstretched in front of her. She knelt down and gently laid the wings as close to Merla and the vulture as they could be without touching them. By then, Keith and the rest of the Lion Voltron force were watching from just outside the tree line. Allura backed up and in anguish continued looking on at Merla.

Then she spoke, "Merla, I'm sure we can find a way to heal him. Please let us help."

Tears suddenly began streaming from Merla's eyes again although the anger in them hadn't changed at all, and she spat out the words, "Haven't you done enough?"

Then she gathered the vulture and his wings into her arms as she stood up, all the while glaring at Allura. Then, Merla started to turn dark all over, just as she had during the spell to turn her vulture into a robeast.

Allura was appalled. Her mouth opened in horror which she reflexively covered with her hands. The rest of the Voltron force's mouths had dropped open too. Keith instantly began running for Allura, in a frantic attempt to protect her from any danger that may happen. Right behind him, he was followed by the rest of the team. Keith reached Allura and protectively wrapped his arms around her while staring at Merla. The rest of the team all stopped beside Allura.

Not moving except for her mouth, Merla then said, "Ay-wah-eem-kayt," as if it were all one word, but it was actually a black magic spell saying the words 'take me away' backwards. As soon as Merla had finished the words, she and her vulture disappeared. They reappeared in Merla's star cutter and from there she took off to journey back to Planet Doom.

"I don't know, Allura," he answered, hugging her while he spoke. Then he repeated, "I don't know."

Solemnly the pilots returned to the lions and took off for where the Vehicle Voltron force was with Sven. The short journey seemed quite long to them all as they were each silently contemplating over all they had recently witnessed in Merla.

Commentary: It was fun bringing in Sven to save the day. Against a mind reading robeast, who else but Sven? I expanded on Sven's performance in the animated series during which Sven was seriously injured and sent away for medical care on Planet Ebb (though in go-lion, he was killed). During that episode Sven displayed an ability to "feel" through Hagar's magic to find her by using what seemed to be some sort of meditation ceremony. So in this story I used that concept in a bit of a different way in that Sven used the process to hide his thoughts from the robeast. To me it seemed probable that he'd be able to do that. It was also fun showing off Sven's piloting skills in Ginger's red falcon. I don't do much for mimicking Sven's Scandinavian accent because I think it can make reading it cumbersome. But maybe someday I'll get daring enough to just changing it all to how he really sounds. I didn't want Merla's vulture destroyed. For me it was too heartbreaking of a thing to happen to her. As it was, at least she got the body back to mourn over. I explain in a later story what caused the vulture to suddenly shrink down into his normal form. The part on the end where Merla is so sad and so angry at the same time is almost as if it's a separate story. But I used it to end this story because I think the two themes work together better than what they would have worked apart. The part where I said Merla had learned to mind read from muses is true based on an animated episode. To learn more as to why Merla would have such strong negative feelings against Allura, read the fifth paragraph from the bottom of the story Doom and Darkness United Again.