#also i cannot stop thinking of tails just throwing a fucking wrench at everyone and everything this is magical

[rapidhighway]

my favorite skill of Amy's is the one where she smiles with a big heart and explodes everything into smithereens

[willadisastercry]

Retrieval mission gone horribly wrong: nearly everyone is whumped...

tw: discussion of blood, breathing difficulties, impalement, loss of conciousness, discussion of the aftermath of an explosion

The mission should’ve been simple. All they had to do was blend in, which meant no armor, only concealed bayards. Everybody knew the deal, Pidge has the tablet that tracts the artifact, the rest follow and protect Pidge who retrieves said artifact. They were supposed to get in and out quickly, to not leave time to dawdle, or room for error. And most importantly, not get caught. But the entire team was off that day, leaving little that went according to plan and multiple members of the group badly injured and in need of tending. It didn’t matter if it was a lack of focus or proper intel... but who was left to save them?

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3

Hunk had refused to enter the crudely lit corridor and watched in horror as his teammates were enveloped into darkness aside from the shrinking green and red and grey glows of their bayards.

The vibes were just off, he’d argued in protest since the power hadn’t wavered once when they combed the previous floor. We don’t have our suits and cannot afford to blindly walk into an ambush with only our bayards. Not to mention, there is not a single guard around—absolutely nothing to protect this artifact located down a dark and mysterious hallway, does not mean go and check it out anyway?!

But Pidge’s radar confirmed the signal was emitting from just a couples yards ahead and the other boys couldn’t argue with that.

“You don’t have to come with us, bud.”

“Yea, don’t sweat it...”

“...we gotta get moving.”

They were already running short on time for the estimated window of opportunity to retrieve the artifact they were tracking before the security system rebooted. They just couldn’t pass up the chance, but Hunk also just wasn’t going to be caught dead following them down there.

“I guess I’ll cover you on this end...”

There was nothing on his end though. Not a single thing.

He relished in the steady influx of their voices discussing what they saw over the coms. Nothing for a while, Lance stepping on Pidge’s heel, Keith bonking his bayard on the wall accidentally and it scaring them, Pidge saying they were closing in on the artifact. But immediately after they started closing in the clear stream became crackled and unintelligible.

Hunk wanted to throw up, he knew something had gone really really wrong when their coms went down completely but Shiro and Allura could still be heard urging everyone to move faster, that they wouldn’t be able to hold the attention of their defense fleet much longer.

They had drawn the patrol fleets’ fire and were serving as a distraction for nearly thirty dobashes now, their lions had taken a substantial amount of damage and wouldn’t hold up much longer.

“Guys?! Pidge, come in! Lance? Keith? ANYONE?!”

“Yelling! In my ear! Why are we yelling?”

“Shit—yeah, hi Shiro. So... Keith, Lance and Pidge followed the signal down this sketchy hallway, but I didn’t go because it looks like the type of hallway you get murdered in—I shouldn’t say that, but it looks like that. It’s pitch black, zero visibility, I can’t see them at all. Man it felt so wrong down there! I knew something was up, I felt bad about not going with them but I couldn’t, I couldn’t go, something wasn’t right!”

“Hunk! Focus! I need you to calm down and tell me you’re exact location, better yet send it to me.”

“Gosh—okay, yeah, I can focus. I can—“

But Shiro never got to calm Hunk down enough to have him even describe where he was because his end of the coms went out and was replaced with a similar static.

“Crap, Allura I’ve got to go in and help them,” Shiro stated as he sprayed the battle ships with a hail of fire before stealing the castle away.

“I’m coming, guys,” Shiro assured even though they likely couldn’t hear him.

Allura stayed back to draw base’s defensive fighters away and then get them off her tail while Coran cloaked the castle. Once they were out of range, Shiro used their last drop ship to bypass the planets defenses while they were still distracted and landed on the base near Pidge’s green lion.

Shiro had no idea what he’d be walking into when he tracked the artifact on the server Pidge created to identify quintessence.

He sure didn’t think he’d first find a passed out Hunk at the beginning of said sketchy hallway with a heavy plume of smoke billowing from it. His forehead bleeding pretty significantly and he didn’t stir when Shiro shook him.

“Fuck,” he breathed as he lugged the larger boy up by his arms and draped him over his back, using their combined momentum to keep them both upright as he trudged into the thick smoke and dense darkness of the sketchy hallway.

It was so dark he couldn’t see five feet in front of him, but it wouldn’t have mattered with the smoke anyway, the only reason he remembered it was there was how it filled and sat heavy in his lungs.

He called out hoarsely. But nothing for the longest time until he followed the blinking light from the server and turned the corner.

The first thing he heard was heavy breathing. He called out, but no one responded. His glowing hand casting a vague purple sheen that illuminated his path slightly and allowed him just enough visibility to not to eat shit over the debris that littered the floor.

There had been an explosion.

Hunk had been right. There was no one guarding the suspicious hallway with the precious artifact because the guard was the spooky hallway itself.

Shiro slowed and began scanning the entire width of the hallway as he moved, looking for the first sign of life or anything that looked like it would set off a bomb, but wasn’t too worried about that since his team had obviously made it that far without...

He forced any thought about what he might stumble upon when he found them out of his head. All he needed to focus on was finding them in the first place, which got a little tricky when the hallway forked. The server wasn’t precise enough to pinpoint the difference of fifteen feet accurately. So he stopped altogether now and called out again.

He heard nothing for second, but then he heard wheezing, the strangled rattle of someone’s chest working and darted down the right most corridor.

Before he turned down the next corridor he was stopped dead in his tracks when his purple hand illuminated a shaggy haired form crumpled around the corner of the wall. Keith.

He knelt down and grabbed the shuddering boy’s shoulders. His raspy breathing was what he’d been hearing. He refrained from rolling him onto his back to check for further damage because it was peppered with shards of metal, so instead he assured him that he was safe now and that he’d come back for him once he checked on everyone else. Keith only grunted.

Shiro let Hunk down next to Keith and activated his hand once more to begin scouring the hallway.

He called out again, and this time someone responded. Shiro took off on a weary trot as he followed the weak response, he told them to keep talking as he scanned the floor, very aware of each skinny twist of metal that looked remotely like an arm or a leg until he actually saw a leg attached to one. Lance.

Lance was on his side, his shoulder tucked unnaturally under him, with the tip of a jagged wrench of metal sticking into the fleshy part of his thigh.

“I’m okay,” he huffed as Shiro eyed him worriedly, “I just can’t get up. My shoulder is done for but the bleeding on my leg has sort of stopped or slowed at least, it’s not even that deep it’s just very securely in there.”

“Okay, do you think you can stand?”

Lance laughed dubiously, but extended his uninjured arm out to Shiro anyway.

“That was not at all convincing, but I guess we’ll find out... hook your arm around my neck, yeah just like that, now I’m going to brace your bad arm against your side so nothing moves weird and you’re going to put weight on your good leg... on three, one—three!”

As soon as Shiro hoisted Lance up he nearly topppled back over with the wave of excruciating pain that washed over him, he yelped and writhed as he breathed through it, his legs wobbling while he gripped Shiro’s shirt to keep himself upright.

From what Shiro could tell as he carefully manuevered his arms around Lance’s waist and good arm to keep him from falling, his shoulder appeared to be very much dislocated. But it was now safely clutched against his side, so any jostling of it would be awful, but no further damage would be made.

Lance took a shakey breath and stepped back, giving himself a second to sus out if he could make do with his bad leg. A fresh gush of dark red welled around the shard protruding from his thigh and dribbled slowly down his leg. He grimaced, but it carried his weight.

Shiro’s heart sank. An explosion like this wouldn’t have hurt his team as badly if they were wearing their armor, not just the under suit. It was his order, to be discreet. This was his fault.

“Hey, I’ll live. Pidge was father down, she was closer to this explosion,” Lance mused as he leaned heavily on the wall while he made his way forward.

“There were like several. Keith got the brunt of the first one, is he okay?”

“Uh, ish. I had Hunk with me, he’s out so I left him with Keith.”

“Shit...”

“I know, usually takes a lot more to take out the big—“

“No, look.”

Lance pointed to Pidge with the light of his bayard. She was slumped against the wall and looked like she was mostly okay asides from being unconscious, that is if you didn’t mention the glistening pool of blood below her.

Shiro rushed forward and his stomach turned. Only when he got close did he realize that the entire right side of her body was torn up by metal debris.

A lot were minor knicks, but there was one particularly jagged gash in her side that was likely the source of all the blood.

“Pidge? Hey, you with us?!”

The smaller teammate hummed when Shiro shook them.

“I’m gonna get you out of here, okay? This probably won’t feel good, I’m sorry.”

Shiro lifted up Pidge’s limp form effortlessly, ignoring her pained cries as he held her against his chest so that her head rested on his shoulder, one arm clutching the back of her thighs and the other free to help Lance limp back to the rest of the team.

Hunk was responding by the time they got back. A large hand pressed firmly on Keith’s arm as his chest worked, his breath ragged and his lungs wheezing while he breathed through the thick smoke. Shiro made a mental note that he probably had some other injuries to his chest that were making him so susceptible to the effects of smoke inhalation.

“Okay, Hunk how you doing? Can you walk?”

“I ‘on know,” he slurred, “pro’ly.”

“I can help him. You get the mullet, he’s not looking too hot.”

Lance hefted a dazed Hunk to his feet with his uninjured arm. He swayed, but Lance steadied him.

Shiro knelt beside Keith, balancing Pidge on one side while he probbed his stomach.

“Anything hurt over here?”

“No, agh! Not really, mostly my chest... and my back,” he groaned through labored breaths.

“Good, hold on to me,” he postured before pressing the boys hips against his own and bringing him up with him.

Keith’s breath hitched as he adjusted to the new orientation, but he got his feet under him and clutched Shiro’s shoulder before doubling over. He was almost retching like he was going to be sick, but he just couldn’t breathe.

Hunk who was hanging on Lance held out his arm for him to grasp and he did, grateful for the extra support while he struggled to fill his lungs.

“Easy, Keith. Just relax. I know it hurts, but we have to get back to the Castle. We’ll fix you up soon you just gotta work with us for now,” Shiro soothed, dragging him along sluggishly.

“Shi— o— iro— Shiro? Shiro can you hear me?”

As they moved farther and farther away from the artifact, the coms grew clearer until they could hear Allura’s voice distinct and worried.

“We’re here Princess, we’re all here,” Lance answered.

They heard Allura let out a sigh she tried to repress, she didn’t even know she was holding her breath.

“Are the paladins alright?”

“Uh...”

“Ish.”

“Should I patch Coran in and tell him to prepare a pod?”

Pidge let out a particularly pointed whine as Shiro shifted her so she wouldn’t slip lower, his moving also tweaked something for Keith who moaned a very deep and crackly ‘ouch’.

Shiro eyed the darkened expanse of Lance’s thigh, Hunk’s wavering balance.

“Have him prepare a few... just to be safe.”

“Oh dear, alright.”

They had to move quickly but carefully. Shiro had never tread so lightly during an escape except for now when he was toting two very injured and in pain paladins. He moved even quicker when he realized that Keith had gone from only clutching at his shoulder to leaning entirely into his side, his feet at times merely dragging along. Shiro’s grip on his hip pressing it against his own was uncomfortable for them both but there was no other area untouched on his upper body for him to lug him by.

Lance and Hunk made their own way together, swaying and stumbling the entire time. Lance’s leg had pretty much stopped bleeding, the metal protruding from it effectively staunching it for now, but the damage around it grew more and more apparent. His muscles felt both excruciatingly taut and achingly loose as they squelched around the piercing metal.

It would altogether buckle beneath him every now and again, leaving Hunk mostly holding up Lance but relying on him to reorient himself when his head ached so bad that his vision blurred. Hunk was always careful of his shoulder when he’d stop and hang on him, Lance’s bad arm remaining clutched tightly against his side and out of the way anyway.

“We’re almost to Green, come on buddy,” he said as he urged the larger boy forward, practically hoping now.

No one really knew how they made it out without getting stopped, but the robotic foot soliders seemed to only take into account that the perpetrators who set off the explosions would be running, not hobbling.

Green’s whines were present in everyone’s head with Pidge’s conciousness wavering, the jaws of the smaller lion opening up as soon as they neared.

My paladin! Green lion save paladin! Green lion fly paladin to castle!

“We’ve got her, Green. You just get us back and we’ll do the rest,” Shiro assured, settling down on the ground of the cockpit with Pidge between his legs, her back against his chest so he could put pressure on the gash in her side.

He had guided Keith to his knees where he then practically pitched forward onto his stomach.

Looking at the wounds on his back with some of the metal bits still sticking out in better lighting made Shiro want to hurl.

Then again holding Pidge’s insides in place also made him want to hurl but that was why she was positioned the way she was, so he didn’t have to see it.

Her breathing was fast but it was better than Keith’s. Every now and then she’d make a pained sound and he would just whisper in her ear that she was safe and she would calm down soon after.

And then he’d take her pulse. It had gotten slightly weaker but he could still feel it.

Lance had lowered himself to the ground slowly but his good leg was tired and cramping from the effort of getting out of there and so the descent down was anything less than smooth, his legs giving and his back hitting against the wall. It jarred his shoulder so badly he was wailing.

Hunk held his hands against his ears when Lance screamed out, he hated the fact that his friend was in pain but the shrillness of his cries sent stabbing pains into his skull where a pulsing welt had been growing. There had been an explosion at every key checkpoint on the way to the artifact, including the entrance he was supposed to be covering.

When the wave of nausea and blinding pain subsided, Hunk placed his hand on top of Lance’s who didn’t have the energy to tighten around it while he clenched his teeth together, hissing as every movement Green made only hurt him further.

Keith could sympathize.

The only option was for him was to lay on his stomach, shifting his weight to the side of his ribs that hurt less was all he could do. He could feel every one of Green’s movements reverberating in his chest, riling up every bit of hurt that was now present and dialing it to well past ten.

He just wheezed through most of it, the smoke from the explosion still thick and heavy in his throat, but when his lungs ached so bad he couldn’t help but cough it made his bruised and broken ribs hit the ground and his vision whited out several times.

It wasn’t until one fit racked his body so badly he coughed up a bit of blood that hands were on him pulling him to his knees and putting his head between his legs so he could calm down enough to breathe.

“Hey, Green? Please hurry...”