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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.
Months had gone by on Arus since the Voltron force's skirmish against Doom to protect Earth, and the battles against the robeasts Merla had attacked Arus with, and the final battle against Lotor, and there hadn't been an attack since. No one on Arus knew what the reasons were behind the period of peace, but the people were thoroughly enjoying it. The Voltron force was enjoying it as well, though they were also careful to keep on alert, expecting that an attack could come from Doom at any time. And as more and more time went by, more careful analysis was done in search of any signs of what the forces of Doom might be planning. But no signs of activity or planning had been found.
The time of peace certainly gave Hunk and Darah opportunity to get better acquainted with each other, and Lance and Karla to get re-acquainted with each other.
Despite all that had happened between Darah and Hunk, she still struggled with feelings of unworthiness in herself. Her sense of worth was all based on how much she perceived being valued by Hunk or not. She knew he knew the worst of the worst about her, and really still loved her even after knowing all of that. She loved him and valued his judgment greatly enough that she could love herself. Still she wasn't completely confident that she knew how he felt about her and therefore wasn't confident in how she felt about herself.
With no conflict being initiated by Planet Doom, Hunk and Darah got to spend much time together. After months had gone by of that period of peace, there was a day that Hunk insisted that Darah choose where she would most like to go with him. She finally relented to his wishes and, he knew she was being honest when to his surprise, she picked the desert. He didn't question it though. Together they traveled in a jet shuttle to yellow lion. From there yellow lion took off from deep within the ground and exited through the lion monument that marked the entrance to yellow lion's resting place. Hunk landed yellow lion not far from the monument. At first he had it in a lying position, but Darah requested that he have the lion sitting up.
"But your arm . . . " protested Hunk.
"I'd like to jump," she answered simply while staring at a wall inside the lion as if she was looking right through it.
Hunk sat the mighty yellow lion up. They exited through the hatch on top of its head. Darah stared down at the sand far below her as Hunk stood beside her. The she jumped. Her arms spread out from her sides as she dropped. She hit the sand with her left foot which was quickly but gracefully followed by her right foot. Then she looked out at her right arm. Hunk landed close by her as she assessed her arm's condition.
"How's your arm?"
"It's fine," she answered. The mild happiness she was feeling over that fact was almost imperceptible. And then she was staring steadily at the sand statue of a mighty yellow lion.
"Why'd you want to come out here?" Hunk finally ventured to ask.
Darah turned away from the statue and away from Hunk and gazed out across the desert sands before she answered, "It's all so barren. Like how I feel. Yet there's a certain beauty to it. Barrenness isn't so bad."
Hearing Darah's explanation about broke Hunk's heart, and it moved him to tears.
As Darah continued to stare off across the barren wasteland, she suddenly felt Hunk's warm hands from behind her enclosing her right hand of her weak arm. But at the feeling of his hands, the weakness of her arm was completely forgotten. She turned to look at him only to see him on bended knee, tear-faced, and adoringly looking up at her.
"Darah," began Hunk, "I know we haven't known each other for very long. But you mean the universe to me. Now that I know you, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Darah, will you marry me?"
Tears streamed from Darah's eyes just after hearing Hunk's request as an esteem of completeness overwhelmed her. She dropped to her knees as she turned to completely face him, gazing deeply into his eyes all the while she held his hands with both of her hands.
Then she answered, "Hunk, you mean the universe to me. My life is nothing without you. Yes. Yes. With all my heart I'll marry you. I've never been happier in all my life than what I am right now!"
"What, Hunk?" Darah inquired what the promise would be.
"If something ever happens to me, promise me you'll continue to love yourself as much as I love you."
"And what if I can't promise you that, Hunk? Will you still marry me?"
"I'd never change my mind about that. And I hope you won't either."
"My heart doesn't let changing my mind be a choice. And, yes Hunk, I promise you: I'll always love myself as much as you love me. I trust your judgment deeply. And since you can love me completely for who I am, I love myself for who I am. Who am I to argue with you? I only pray that the day will never come that I'll be living without you. Were it not for you, my esteem of myself would be nonexistent."
"Thank you. Oh . . . and Darah?"
"What?"
"You are my equal. That's who you are to argue with me."
Darah smiled. Then, at that moment, they heard the haunting roar of a lion. Startled, they turned and faced the desert lion monument where the sound had come from.
"It came from the statue," Darah stated the obvious.
"But that's impossible. There's no life in it."
Then a revelation came to Darah, "No, it was a transfer of heart."
She turned her gaze from the lion monument to look at the profile of the yellow lion. Then the mighty mechanical lion turned and looked straight at Darah! Its eyes glowed and then it opened its mighty jaws letting out a roar, sounding just as though it regularly did. Then it turned its head back, looking as though nothing had happened at all.
"Whoa!" exclaimed Hunk in complete amazement. "I knew each of the lions had a spirit to them ,but I've never seen anything like that!"
"It was a transfer of heart," Darah explained again. "The yellow lion transferred its life essence into something lifeless without losing anything from within itself. Much like how I was lifeless like a barren wasteland. But by a transfer of heart through you, I have life again and you've lost no heart because of it. It was a transfer of heart."
"And how do you know that?" asked Hunk yet completely recognizing it as all true.
"It just came to me as though from the yellow lion itself. There's a special connection between it and the monument at the entrance of its den. A connection that's unique in that none of the other lions have a connection like it."
"But the black lion has a connection with the white lion statue."
"Yes, but that's different. The yellow lion and its monument are completely separate from each other. The monument is not needed, but it represents yellow lion's intuition of an incredible strength of heart."
Then Darah gasped in shock over the next revelation that came to her.
"What's wrong?" asked Hunk, very concerned.
"The yellow lion . . . He was the one who found Voltron."
"What?"
Darah brought her hands up to her head and closed her eyes as if she had a headache and out loud she declared, "No! I don't want to know anymore!"
And the messages stopped.
What happened?" asked Hunk.
Darah fell against Hunk and hugged herself to him as she explained, "I don't know Hunk. I was getting a glimpse into history. An evil many times worse than my own past was revealed to me. I didn't want to know where it came from. I didn't want to know anymore about it. What I do know is that you are the cause for changing me for who I now am, and that witnessing that is what stirred the very inner being of yellow lion to life and to display all that it did. It reminded him all of a time very dear to him, but I didn't want to know about it. It involved something utterly awful from the past."
"Are you ok?"
Darah let go of Hunk and turned to yellow lion. She answered, "Yes. I'm honored the yellow lion has honored me similarly to the honor he bestowed on Voltron so long ago. An honor I wouldn't allow myself to understand, but a tremendous honor of acceptance all the same. But it's a shadow the honor I have spending my life with you. I love you so much, Hunk!"
After a long passionate kiss, they moved to go board the yellow lion. But, as they walked, Darah noticed a gray object at the foot of the lion monument becoming more and more evident as wind blew the sand away. She let go of Hunk's hand and went over to see what it was. She picked it up and it was a headband-like stone crown. Darah put it on and it laid flat against her head like a headband.
"What does it mean?" asked Hunk.
"I'm not sure. I think it's a gift. It's just what I needed. On my side of the empire, women with status equal to that of a warrior but are not warriors, wear a headband similar to this. I am no longer a warrior. I renounce it. This is my headband which I accept as a gracious gift."
"A gift? From yellow lion? How?"
Darah looked at the lion monument and said, "Through the transfer of heart. It was the statue that found it. It must have been the statue. But there's no life in it. During that moment the yellow lion shared its essence, and before the statue was itself again, yellow lion must have found it but it was found by its essence that was, for those brief moments, the yellow lion monument."
"And it finds similarities in you as what it once found it in Voltron? You're like the ancient warrior Voltron?"
Darah paled a little over thoughts of what little she had allowed herself to know about the similarities between her and Voltron.
"I'm sorry, Darah," apologized Hunk as he was suddenly holding onto her, trying to offer comfort. "I shouldn't have asked. Forget it. Are you going to be ok?"
"Yes, I do have similarities with Voltron. I won't deny yellow lion's judgment of character. But Voltron was of character of such greatness, I dare not fathom that I'd even be a shadow of. And, he finds me similar to Voltron in an extent that I don't want to understand. I don't want to know about it. There's a deeper side to the Legend of Voltron that's been forgotten. That's the horrific evil I don't want to know about. I feel deathly ill over the thought that I know I have similarities with that also. Yet, I pale in comparison to Voltron. The similarities mean nothing except that yellow lion was nostalgic in allowing itself to feel them fully as experiences it once knew in a time of days of long ago."
"You're more special than you'll ever realize."
"Maybe so, but it doesn't compare with you."
Then again they shared a long passionate kiss. After finally parting, they boarded the yellow lion and returned it deep within the ground through the opening of the yellow lion monument. Then they returned to the Castle of lions and what wondrous news they had to share!
[Author -- Sheila Bliss, based on the previous creation
of Voltron by World Events Productions]
Next Story Woeful Wooing
Commentary: With Lotor gone, I was at a bit of a loss as to how to
bring back the conflict between Planets Arus and Doom. Instead I took
advantage of the idea that perhaps it would take a while, for
whatever reason, before Doom would attack again. And I wanted to
continue showing the progress of the relationship between Hunk and
Darah, and a period of peace seemed good opportunity for doing that.
A period of peace would of course give them much time for getting to
know each other better. But, rather than go into a long series of
stories about how they get to know each other, I jump passed that and
straight to their engagement (also in my imagination it seemed
appropriate to do that since no pertinent stories to further describe
their relationship were coming to mind). I have Hunk realize that
when Darah was describing the barrenness of the desert as being not
so bad, that she was really making a comparison to herself. I thought
it natural in how this would sadden Hunk greatly, and that he would
want to fill Darah's feeling of barrenness with his love. The most
profound way for him to attempt to do so I figured would be for him
to propose marriage to her, so that's what I have him do. Jumping off
from the top of one of the lions may seem really unrealistic, but I
like having that sort of thing in my stories because it happened in
the cartoons. The whole magic-like stuff with the yellow lion and its
desert sand statue and with Queen Ariella's crown, all came to me as
I was writing. What basically inspired me was that I had long planned
Darah would get herself some sort of headband, like Hazar's sister
Dorma has in the Vehicle Voltron cartoons. And I surmised on my own
that the reason Dorma has the headband is because she is sort of non-
military personal with a lot of clout. So it then seemed natural for
Darah to seek to be non-military given her new life on Planet Arus.
And, I figured she would then want a headband signifying she was
retaining honor of a warrior. Then somehow it occurred to me, why not
Ariella's crown? It seemed a bit strange, but I decided to keep it
anyway. It's not meant in the story that the crown has any sort of
magical powers. It is just a gift from yellow lion as Darah explains.
My whole explanation about the significance of the desert lion
monument to the yellow lion, is completely made up on my part. No
such explanation was given in the cartoons. It was revealed in at
least one of the cartoon episodes (excluding "Voltron the Third
Dimension") that the lions do have some sort of spirit to them, and
also that Voltron was once a warrior and not a robot. I use that
information in this story as to why the yellow lion can move on its
own and communicate with Darah, and for the embellishment I have in
creating a past for Voltron as a warrior that Darah gets a glimpse
into, but is too horrified by it to allow herself to really take it
in. I have created a story of Voltron's past, but it's not typed yet.
I have the yellow lion sometimes referred to as "he" and sometimes
referred to as "it." I do that on purpose because there is certainly
confusion as to how alive yellow lion really is, and I figured the
characters in Voltron would naturally not be consistent as to which
pronoun they used. I know yellow lion is a "he" because based on one
of the cartoons, a spirit of a yellow lion appeared one time when Voltron was
formed. I infer that to be the actual spirit of yellow lion and that
yellow lion had the closest connection to the ancient warrior
Voltron. Since the yellow spirit lion had a nice full mane, it most
likely was male (though there have been female lions with manes).
Darah's arm was injured in the story Accidental Destruction,
and it was partially healed
in the story Hunk's Urgent Request.
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