#reem writes gen

[sp4c3-0ddity]

Title: Blabbermouth Fandom:  Voltron: Legendary Defender Rating:  Teen and Up Pairings:  Gen, plance if you squint Characters:  Lotor, Lance Warnings:  Implied/Referenced Torture Word Count:  ~970

A/N:

for @badthingshappenbingo!! Prompt:  Truth Serum/Potion

you can also read it on ao3 here

not beta read, not even really by me

“You realize I’m just saying every word that pops into my head, right?”

Lotor gnashes his teeth together as he faces his prisoner. The young man already proved to be a blabbermouth upon capture, but the truth potion Acxa administered to him before they started their interrogation only made it worse.

“So obviously,” he continues, his dark blue eyes darting around the gloomy chamber, “I should just keep talking about whatever to make sure I can’t hear any of the question you’re asking me.” A loathsome smirk tugs at his lips.

Lotor does not rake his hand down his face out of frustration, but he deeply and thoroughly regrets killing Narti. What did it matter if she betrayed him to Haggar? A few ticks of her rooting around in this fool’s mind would’ve given them all the information they need about Princess Allura’s whereabouts!

Instead they learned all the most bizarre and intimate details of this man’s life - and, well, if Lotor can figure out a way to use those against him he will, but now...

“...and my left foot is slightly bigger than my right foot, but I can only really tell while I’m trying on a new pair of shoes.” He raises both bare feet into the air, peering over his toes and grinning at Lotor. “What about you, Prince Perfect? You have any flaws?”

Lotor’s eye twitches as Ezor, hovering nearby in case the prisoner escapes his bonds, giggles. He shoots her a glare, and her gaze drifts to the floor, chagrined. He smiles, some relief filling him; at least his underlings still obey him even with a simple glance.

“You know, I cried when a spider bit my sister,” he continues, barely pausing for breath. “I thought she was going to die. To be fair I was only six, but it’s still worth mentioning, in my honest--”

“Enough!” Lotor, losing his patience, strikes him with a backhand. His head whips back, eyes wide with shock, an angry red mark left on his cheek.

He turns his head, blood on his lip where his teeth must’ve grazed it - it’s what the imbecile gets for talking so much - and mutters, “You’re an ass, Your Highness.”

Lotor crosses his arms, staring down his nose at him. “I’ve been called worse things from better people than fools like you,” he sneers.

The man snorts. “I’ve been called a fool as a word of endearment,” he says. “That’s not an insult to me.”

“Maybe we should break his fingers till he talks,” Zethrid suggests.

“What’s wrong with good, old-fashioned torture?” Ezor agrees. She runs her fingers through their prisoner’s hair almost fondly, a gesture that must not fool him judging by how he jerks away from her touch.

“No, thank you,” he says with a smile that shows off a hint of fear. “I’m satisfied with a slap and a truth potion, but if you must, why not try tickling me? Pidge always tells me it’s the easiest way to decapitate me and therefore my greatest weakness.”

“I think you mean incapacitate,” Acxa corrects.

Lotor’s eyes slip shut, a shallow sigh escaping his nostrils. It goes a long way to calm him, to wash away the man’s obnoxious, disjointed rambling. They need something to use against him if he won’t reveal any information more useful than the size of his feet or how old he was when a spider bit his sister.

“Is that really what I mean, my lady?” the prisoner taunts. “It could be, I guess, since Pidge is always saying words I don’t understand, but she’s patient enough to explain them to me. And that’s all right, because I speak more human languages than she does!” He gasps and adds, “Oh, I could be talking in Spanish now, and you wouldn’t understand a word I’m--”

“So who is this Pidge?” Lotor asks. He leans over and grabs the man’s jaw with two fingers, turning his face towards his and forcing him to meet his eyes. “Tell me about her.”

“Oh, she’s brilliant!” he tells him. A silly smile crosses the man’s face, a far cry from the smug smirk or the one edged with fear. “I think you’d like her...but I can’t say she’d like you since you killed her--” His eyes widen almost comically, a flicker of terror in his eyes.

And Lotor, at last, knows he’s finally hit on a sore spot; but he suppresses a smirk and lets the man ramble.

“What’s there to say about Pidge?” he says, shrugging. “Why not ask me about my other friends? I have so many - more than you do, probably.” He nods towards Ezor, heedless of her fingers in his hair ready to yank his head back at a moment’s notice. “So you’ll have to be more specific, Your Highness.”

“But I’m not done hearing you speak about this one!” Lotor says brightly. He rests a hand on his shoulder, the man’s head tilting back to keep his face in view. “I have a name - I may even have remembered killing her...father, is it?” He raises an eyebrow, his heart skipping a beat in excitement, in triumph just within reach, and the fear rapidly spreading over the prisoner’s face only confirms all his assumptions.

“So unless you want this friend of yours to suffer the very particular attention of my comrades, why don’t we stop wasting this truth potion and you tell me what you know about Princess Allura?”

(From the corner of his eye, he sees Ezor’s sharp grin and Acxa nodding a confirmation at Zethrid, and all for the better. Lotor is nothing if not a man of his word, and if this Lance needs proof he means what he says, he’s all too happy to provide it.)

[mister-lady]

treat: free space! gush about your f/os. what are your favorite things about them? what do they do that make you smile? for whichever f/o(s) you feel like gushing about!

I was saving this for when I got a strong feelin to gush caus I got a free excuse to gush akfkfkvkfksk

Anyways I'm going full out gush here because I have the excuse and opportunity to do so, so uhmb,, enjoy reading the new book about how gay I am akggkksjdt

Anyways, virgol, ammiright? I will give you so many reasons to be gay for this idiot if you arent already /j

And thos are just the images I hav on me-

Fhjj,,, oki so,, where do I start?? He can barely stand straight on a skateboard who decided to make his spot near the staircase skgkdkdkg. He jus looks so,, huggable?? Like he needs to be hugged but he looks so soft and like he'd be the perfect weighted blanket an verie warm,,, an his voice??? Hjjgh,,, I jus,, I lovb his voice.,, I dunno how to describe his voice?? I mean I suppose I dont need to cause you know how he sounds but for the embodiment of anxiety he certainly has a verie soothing voice,,, an hes jus verie cute?? Like I'd show more pics if tumblr allowed but I lov him. His puppet was a sock???? Lovely. Soft local emo boi needs to be held and I shall gladly volunteer to do so. Like he's such a dork for halloween? And honestly me too halloween is my favorite holiday but he went full out with the vampire costume and even tried getting C!Thomas to help him scare the others in the begining?? Gkgkskgk. An?? I jus love the vibes he gives off is verie nice. Hes jus this ball of trying to be intimidating and spoopy and is but is a ball of wittiness and needs to be kissed and such and I wan hold himb?? Or be held by him??? I will gladly take both options. When he gets super excited the purple eyeshadoe???? You don't know how many gay imagines that has fueled. And himb singing?? Veire gay. Hes either the big spoon or little spoon and theres no inbetween. I'd let himb steal all of my hoodies free of charge and I wanna bake with him and he's just such a big sweetheart with good intentions an is jus,, I lovb him lots and am verie gay for himb rn and he's a dumb emo and did I say hes cute and sweet yet? Caus he is. Like he has a pet spider an actually tidies up his room for whatver reason an has the skeleton onesie?? Aaaa??? Someone let me jus,, hold his hand or I might implode or something along the lines of that

[hailqiqi]

2019 Fic Round-Up

Writer buddies, let’s do this (as in, if you haven’t yet, do yours too!)

Stats:

(I’m going with a random quote from each one because I’m a fan of long summaries.)

Fics Posted (Gen): 3

A Little Taste of What Should Have Been

And that was how Pidge found herself kneeling sideways on the couch, face inches away from Lance’s shoulder as he disinfected first two sewing needles and then the earrings with a professional air.

Wriggle, Jiggle, Bake!

“Okay, so you’ve been magically de-aged — because apparently that’s a thing. Why is that a thing? Whatever. Of course it’s a thing out here."

Here

“Don’t make it weird, Lance,” she huffed, already tugging him into the room and closing the door behind them. “C’mon. I’ll help you wash all that off.”

Fics Posted (Plance Oneshots): 7

2 x 100 word drabbles

(Domestic Fantasy & Kabedon)

The Advantages of Being Small

“I couldn’t help it! It was just too tempting!”

Untangle to Wait, Unravel to See

Of course a fortune teller would appear as soon as he started talking about one. They were on a magical world with magical aliens and Lance was like, the hero of the story, so it made sense that events would be tied to his dialogue. Most importantly, it was not creepy at all, and anyone who said Lance was creeped out could go suck it.

the world is out there, my dear, but we're in here

Pidge froze. The reaction was so subtle that Lance would have missed it if he hadn't been watching for it -- she relaxed herself almost immediately, eyebrows raised in casual challenge -- but she'd reacted, all the same.

so it turns out I kinda missed you

Grumbling, Lance crossed his arms and sunk back into his seat. “I could’ve come to get her on my own, you know.” “Yeah, but then you wouldn’t be able to make out in the back seat on the way home.”

The Stars Aren't the Same for You and I

Dancing with Pidge was fun.

Fics Posted (Plance Chaptered): 2 (1.5?)

Skirting Katabasis

"So... Do you think you could put it back together?" Pidge tilted the tablet towards her and looked at him hard. His expression was hesitant, but his eyes were soft...almost pleading. She smirked. "Who do you think I am, Keith?”

The Future in Snippets (Chapters 3-5)

In truth, she had no idea what was fine. Her brain had switched off several heartbeats ago, but she couldn’t really find it in herself to care.

Fics Posted (Plance Collabs): 2

Smack, Kiss, Fall in Love (even chapters)

The prince doesn’t ignore the princess for the nerdy sidekick. Even if that sidekick was a badass fighter who’d saved his life countless times. Or a genius who constantly left his head spinning. Or totally into the same video games that defined Lance’s childhood, and the owner of a smile so blinding it made the stars look dim.

(shoutout to @sp4c3-0ddity​, my co-conspirator who made Pidge’s star so bright!)

It's Beginning to Look a Lot like A Christmas Carol  (Prologue & Chap 1)

“An intervention?” “Sure. Have you ever seen A Christmas Carol?” His mind freezes. “You mean the Dickens book?” “Uh…” Keith’s dad trails off, blinking. “No, the movie. With the little green man? I think they made a version with the grouchy duck, too.”

(shoutout to the awesome @rueitae​ and @sp4c3-0ddity​ who brought both the crack and the tears essential items for any Christmas party all we’re missing is the food fight and divorce)

Total Fics Posted: 14

Oooh wow. That’s more than one a month!

 Ship/Character Breakdown:

Ship Breakdown: Plance, with over 75%

[colleen image]

Character Breakdown: Pidge and Lance are in 100% of my fics. Hunk is next in 5 (with 1 POV!), then Keith and Allura both get 3 (both even get POV parts and Keith’s a major focus in Skirting Katabasis), then Shiro, Coran and Lance/Pidge’s families are more bit players.

I only just realized that the chapter in Smack, Kiss, Fall in Love is the only time I’ve really written Shiro. And now I’m horrified because Shiro was my first love.

Characters that had the Main Focus: 6 +1 Lance POV, 4+2 Pidge POV, 2 Switching POV fics and then the drabbles don’t count.  I actually started out the year tearing my hair out because I related to Pidge so much more, but now I really enjoy writing Lance. It’s actually a little tricky to get into Pidge’s headspace to work on my chaptereds sometimes.

Specifics

 Best/Worst Title?

Best Skirting Katabasis. C’mon. That’s like, literary (Katabasis being hell or destruction in Greek mythos). Worst Untangle to Wait, Unravel to See. I had help with it but this fic was just so hard to name.

Best/worst last line?

Best I tend to structure my chapters/one-shots around the last line so…this is hard.

"What took you so long? I've been waiting for you."

(Untangle to Wait, Unravel to See)

My personal favourite, though, is from so it turns out I kinda missed you:

Luis laughed. “Hi, Not-My-Girlfriend. I’m Not-His-Brother, Luis.”

Worst

Hunk just laughed. “You can’t fix that right now, so you might as well have some fun!”

(Wriggle, Jiggle, Bake!) So cheesey.

The last line that gives me personal arghs is from Here:

He buried his face in her sodden hair and cried.

...because a day after posting I realised that I should’ve written wept, dammit, and now it annoys me every time I see it.

Honourable mention to The Advantages of Being Small for winning the no-context award:

“Reckon I could fit three fingers up there?”

 General Questions

 Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?

Way more than I thought!  I think I had planned out about 8? Of those I wrote two (zine fics), started but haven’t finished 2, and the other 4 are still pending.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?

None, my obsessions are long-lasting and constant.

What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.

Skirting Katabasis or It’s Beginning to Look a Lot like A Christmas Carol. Though TBH I enjoy re-reading most of the stuff I posted in the last 6 months.

Okay, NOW your most popular story.

In every single metric on AO3 it’s The Future in Snippets. Y’all like your porn (even if there’s not much of it).

On tumblr it’s Wriggle, Jiggle, Bake! by like 100 notes.

Story most underappreciated by the universe?

If this is a roundabout way of saying ‘What’s your LEAST popular story?’ it’s The Advantages of Being Small, but TBH that’s a very short crack-ficlet so it doesn’t bother me (same with the drabbles).

If the question is “What fic do you think people should like MORE?” the answer is Skirting Katabasis. It’s fifth on the list for bookmarks and 9th for Kudos, and I’m not sure why?? Does it sound too gen? Do you not like Platonic Adventure Kidge? Honestly y’all are missing out it’s like the best thing I’ve ever written. Hands down.

Story that could have been better?

The Future in Snippets. Hands down. It was started on a whim, as a practice fic for another idea I’ve been nurturing for even longer, and back when I was newer at this writing thing. It wasn’t very tightly plotted – in fact the plot was expanded upon and changed multiple times before I settled on what I have now, several chapters in – and certain things that should have been seeded were left out of earlier chapters because I wasn’t experienced enough to figure out how to work them in and foolishly thought ‘oh, it won’t matter! Such a small detail!’, so now I’m scratching my head trying to figure out how to compensate.

I tend to work off very tight outlines, but Snippets was missing that for a large part of the process and I think it shows. I do think I’ve done a good job nailing the emotion in it, though, and that’s like 95% of the fic so as long as I keep that up it’ll all be fine.

Sexiest story?

The Future in Snippets is smut so… First place for SFW sexy goes to the world is out there, my dear, but we’re in here.

Saddest story?

I think The Stars Aren’t the Same for You and I wins because it’s a heartbreaking situation with no good resolution. There’s no comfort to be found there.

Most fun?

A Little Taste of What Should Have Been. It’s just…fun!

The most fun I had writing was Smack, Kiss, Fall in Love, because it was challenging, and I’d wake up every day excited to find out what had happened in the last chapter overnight.

Story with single sweetest moment?

The Future in Snippets (Chapter 4) 

“Um…” She turned the brush in her hands over again before holding it up sheepishly. “Do you remember how you said you’d braid my hair?”

Lance’s whole face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Really?!”

A giggle escaped her lips and she smiled, nodding. “Really.”

Hardest story to write?

The Future in Snippets. The emotions in this fic have become a convoluted mess and it is growing exponentially harder to write as I continue. I simply don’t have the level of skill required, but by God I will find it so that I can finish it properly.

Easiest/most fun story to write?

Skirting Katabasis!  The outline for this fic is tight, and I freaking love writing this fic. Like I just feel like smiling the whole process. I don’t know why. It feels like the wrong answer because it’s a fairly involved fic, but I just enjoy everything about it.

Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?

Smack, Kiss, Fall in Love actually gave me a much better understanding of Lance. Skirting Katabasis made me really look at Keith and realise that hey – the dude is actually very emotional, very chatty, and very soft (he’s so often typecast as the ‘moody loner’ because that’s what they call him in the show but he really doesn’t act like that).

Most overdue story?

Uh. The Future in Snippets was originally scheduled to be finished in January 2018, so… I also have a soulmate WIP which was meant to be for V-Day 2018.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

I started to play about with other POVs, and discovered that I can write other POVs? I also did two collabs!  The first one I discovered that Reem really is a sweetheart, and with the second I discovered that either I’m really bossy or really persuasive or both maybe I should go into politics.

I also did a couple of events and zines and exchanges. I discovered that piece-writing – like writing with a target/deadline/outside expectation – does not agree with me, and I will no longer sign up for events/zines/exchanges.

What are your fic writing goals for next year?

1.     Finish my WIPs.

2.     Write my Pidge Makes Bad Decisions fic!

3.     That’s about it really. Can you take over the world by writing fic? If so, that’s going on the list.

[sp4c3-0ddity]

this is my preview for the @vldaustoryzine, Song of Heroes!! pre-orders open in just a couple days, so get excited!!

[sp4c3-0ddity]

Title: loose thread Fandom:  Voltron: Legendary Defender Rating:  Teen and Up Pairings:  Gen Characters:  Pidge, Hira Warnings:  Drugging Word Count:  ~1640

A/N:

fantasy AU (because it’s me) for @badthingshappenbingo!! Prompt:  Can Only Move the Eyes

you can also read it on ao3 here

not beta read

prompts that have been filled are marked with an X, prompt requested is circled

Pidge is slow to wake. Her eyelids stick together, sight bleary and clouded no matter how many times she blinks to clear it. Her first thought is how exhausted she is, how she wants nothing more than to roll onto her side and slip back into a warm dream; and with it still so dark she sees nothing, she should sleep while she can.

She must've ignored Shiro's scolding and Minerva's prodding and stayed up too late again.

"What are you even doing while the rest of us are asleep?" Lance asked her once. "Something you don't want the rest of us to see?"

"Yes," was her easy, clipped, irritated answer that she regretted as soon as she registered the teasing that was in his voice and the scowl that rose to his lips before he bid her a terse good night.

It's rare Pidge wakes without someone - her mother, once upon a time, and Minerva more often lately with a nudge to her mind - waking her, so it's a wonder she still needs sleep. Her eyes slip shut again as a sigh escapes her, and she raises her hands to stretch.

Or she tries to.

Her arms refuse to obey her; she can't even lift them off the thin mattress, and when she tries to raise her head or shift her shoulders to shrug off the quilt, she can't do that either.

"W--"

Her heart skips a beat at the sound of her own pathetic whimper. Why can't she even move her lips to speak, to demand of her own body why it won't do as she asks it?

Her feet and legs are as rigid as her hands and arms, utterly useless and disconnected from her will, and it doesn't take long for Pidge to come to the conclusion that she can't move anything.

Her whole body is sticky with sweat under the quilt, her clothes uncomfortable against her skin. She tries - desperately, so desperate sweat beads along her forehead with the effort - to wiggle, if only a little, but a wordless, frustrated sob slips from her when she can't.

Panic grips her, and it's all Pidge can do to breathe. Her lungs ache, heaving in shallow bursts of air while her heart pounds wildly. Oh, God, what's happening to her? Where is she? Is this even her room at the Castle? She can barely see anything, it's so dark, it's--

It's a blindfold, she realizes. A strip of cloth covers her eyes - and how--how could she not have noticed that?

Where--where's everyone else, all her friends and Matt? Shiro, Lance, Hunk...

Minerva!

Frantically she reaches out to her - why did she not sooner? - seeking for that invisible bond and tugging with all her mental strength and--

It stretches beyond her view. No matter how much she tugs, it refuses to tauten, so Pidge is left pulling an endless thread that connects nowhere.

No, no, no! Pidge seeks Minerva as she would any thought that slipped from her grasp, sifting through her mind; it's like misplacing her brother's glasses or her journal, but so much worse.

Hot tears prick at her eyes and bile rises into her throat. Minerva, she thinks, desperate, where are you?

Her faithful and impossible friend, her closest companion, the griffin she raised from an egg...she wouldn't just ignore Pidge's pleas, would she?

Unless she fell victim to poachers.

A new fear creeps into Pidge; her stomach roils with nausea. Minerva came to her rescue more times than she could count - her friends' griffins came to theirs, always quick and fierce when protecting their flock - but now she needs Pidge.

"Fledgling," Minerva called Pidge, always full of fondness and occasionally with a touch of exasperation.

"Why do you call me that?" Pidge wondered once.

"Young and flightless," Minerva replied in her simple diction. How far she'd come from when she could only communicate in memories and images...

Pidge snorted and said, "I'm practically your mother!"

"Flightless!" Minerva insisted with a click of her beak. She nuzzled Pidge's hair, making her giggle, and added, "Need rescue from predators. Hatchling?"

"If you call me 'hatchling' I'm never bringing you wool to play with again."

Minerva screeched indignantly as Pidge laughed.

Pidge is as useless and helpless as a hatchling griffin now; the quilt covering her - barely keeping her warm in this drafty room - may as well be a chain winding around her body for all the success she's had throwing it off.

And she doesn't even know where she is or how she came to be here.

Pidge probes her mind - it's the only weapon left to her - and her memory. She remembers...something. She and Keith sneaking into a village for supplies while their griffins hid in the trees; Pidge insisting Keith go ahead without her when she overheard someone saying her father's name; assailing the speaker, a stately woman with a beauty mark walking alongside a shorter, bespectacled man; the two taking Pidge into a tavern for a drink and a chat...

Pidge swaying on her feet as she left them and Minerva's wings spread wide and blotting out the sun before it all went black.

They drugged her, Pidge realizes, and somehow they took Minerva from her too.

She'd cry, sob, and scream if she could, for the tightness in her chest and the fear in her gut. What now? Is she just to lie here and wait until the drug wears off - what if its effects are permanent? - or until her captors deign to pay her a visit?

A muffled creaking of rusty hinges makes her breath catch, and a heartbeat later heavy footsteps approach. A voice buzzes, but Pidge's ears are so full of cotton she barely understands.

Rough fingers tug on her head and untie the blindfold. An intense light - too bright and pinpoint to be natural - blinds her, and she has to blink tears from her eyes.

The intruder sets aside the light. Their face, too blurry for Pidge to make out any features, hovers over her, but this time she hears a deep, feminine voice, "...sure you...questions."

Pidge thinks she can guess the missing words. An awful anger - for Minerva, for herself - that would twist her lips and make her spit insults were she able fills her, and she glares up at the indistinct face.

She hopes they can see the hatred in her eyes.

The figure crosses their arms. "My...Commander Hira...Altean... - or I was." They laugh bitterly, and the mattress sinks beneath Pidge as they take a seat. "We are both fugitives...the Empire, are we not?"

Pidge blinks furiously, forcing her eyes to focus; the woman's - Commander Hira's? And she's an Altean? - words are becoming easier to distinguish, and her face blurs less until she can make out a pair of gleaming, metallic blue markings on her cheeks and pointed, elfin ears.

Pidge thought all Alteans died out - killed by the Galra - generations ago...does this mean some live?

It doesn't matter; she has to escape somehow, but her body is as unresponsive as ever.

Pidge wants to demand what this Commander Hira wants of her. She wants answers about her whereabouts, about her condition, about Minerva, but she can't ask for anything.

And her impotence infuriates her.

"I apologize for drugging you, Lady Green," Commander Hira says with a heavy sigh. "I am afraid it was necessary for your sake - and your Gift's sake - as well as mine and my men's."

Why did she call Pidge Lady Green? And why did she say "gift" as if it was a proper noun?

"You see"--Hira stands and paces around the round, stone-walled room with her hands folded behind her back--"we simply cannot have an angry griffin rampaging for its rider while we conduct our study, so until we find an alternative, you and your Gift must remain drugged."

Minerva is her "Gift"? And...study?

"Now, I heard tell that the Green Guardian favors those with curiosity and intellect," Hira explains, "so I see no harm in sharing some details of the study with you, captive subject or not."

Can it be? Her captor wishes to hand her information so easily?

Far be Pidge the one to protest.

Hira stops at the end of the cot. "You may have noticed that your little...connection to your Gift is a rare thing," she says. "The like of it is mythical and its nature a mystery, and so my lieutenant and I are eager to study it. You said your father is Sam Holt, Lady Green; is he not a naturalist?"

A sick feeling takes hold of her, her heart squeezing in her chest. She has an awful idea what Hira's study entails - oh, how she regrets parting from Keith and approaching her!

"Then you of all people will understand what we seek to accomplish." Hira leans over Pidge and takes her chin in hand, the touch making her skin crawl. "We wish to replicate this bond you and your Gift have forged," she says, "and we will weaponize it to exterminate the Galra and take back Altea."

Wait, then did that mean--

"Do not fear for your Gift's life," Hira tells her, her thumb stroking Pidge's cheek as gently as her own mother would and her gaze holding hers. "It is a rare creature, but you..." Her fingernails dig into her skin so sharply and suddenly she gasps. "To forge a new bond, we must break the existing one, and if it cannot be done through other means, then I am afraid you will be this study's first casualty."

Pidge's blood runs cold with understanding. Hira will take Minerva away from her and force someone else on her. She'll kill Pidge without remorse...and she won't even have the chance to scream.

[sp4c3-0ddity]

If you're taking prompts... Can I ask for Hunk and a space chicken? 👀

i’ve been waiting my entire life for this prompt. thank you for enabling my Hunk + birds habit on top of my love for chickens ;_;

also timeline in this is all over the place so let’s call it canon divergent. ~2000 words, and i hope you like it

If there was one thing from Earth - beside his family - Hunk missed it was chicken eggs.

Sure, there were other foods and herbs and spices he couldn’t quite replicate with ingredients from alien plants - although he found capsaicin in the exoskeleton of a beetle-like insect thing and ground it to season curry for Shiro…not that he’d tell him that was the source - but he never found anything resembling a chicken egg.

The consistency would be all wrong, the yolk a strange color, too much cholesterol or too little protein, a shell even the Yellow Lion’s foot couldn’t crack (and Hunk really didn’t want to know what would hatch from an egg that tough)...

Hunk just wanted a quiznaking omelet.

“Are you sure these are edible?” Pidge held an oblong object that barely fit in the palm of her small hand up to the kitchen’s light. It seemed to reflect the lights overhead, with the darker spots of pigmentation absorbing.

Hunk carefully snatched it from her hand. It was soft and squishy, sort of like a water balloon, under his fingertips, and he guessed he’d have to puncture the...skin to get at the edible flesh.

And when he shone a light through it, a round core absorbed the rays, the flesh almost translucent.

Hunk set it beside the others in a large platter. “You and I have both scanned them,” he pointed out, “and they might be a little protein-rich for fruit, but they don’t contain anything toxic to humans.”

Pidge folded her arms on the counter and leaned towards the platter. “Seems a little...risky though,” she mused. “Remember that spotted fuzzy fruit you tried to fry like plantains?”

His shoulders sagged, renewed guilt making his heart sink, but he couldn’t help retorting, “It’s not my fault Lance ate half of them before I could warn him that too many would probably have side-effects.”

Pidge’s eyes narrowed. “He couldn’t walk further than five meters from a bathroom for almost a movement.”

“And I still feel bad about that!” he protested, his stomach twinging with a sympathetic nausea.

“Not as bad as he did,” she retorted. She prodded one of the water balloon fruits with a fingertip. “Where did you find these anyway?”

“Under a tree,” Hunk said. He rummaged through a drawer until his fingers closed around a small knife - something with a bit more point than a spork. “Kind of in a ring? And they definitely feel ripe.”

“Really?” When he turned to face Pidge, her eyebrow was raised. “Why do you think that alien fruit would follow the same rules as Earth fruit?”

“Because so far other rules have been pretty consistent.” Hunk clutched a balloon fruit in one hand and pressed the tip of the knife into its flexible skin, watching how it puckered under. Just a little more pressure... “I mean, it seems like photosynthesis is pretty universal, for one, and for another--”

He broke off when the knife’s point punctured the skin, a triumphant grin pushing at his lips when a viscous white fluid oozed out. He transferred the fruit to a pan on the stove and sliced open the rest of the skin.

The dark core was a deep yellow and definitely not hard enough to be a pit.

Hunk stared at the blob of clear white fluid with its soft yellow center. “Uh...quiznak.”

“Um, Hunk? Something’s happening with one of your so-called fruits.”

He spun around, the tension in Pidge’s voice making his heart race as he turned his attention to the remaining balloon fruit sitting in their platter.

One quivered in place, as if shaken by tremors that only affected it. Its skin rippled before something pointy poked it from the inside.

Hunk stumbled backwards away from the counter, raising the knife in his hands and wishing he had his bayard . “Oh God we’re in a horror movie!” he realized. “I knew it, I knew it, I knew--”

The fruit exploded.

Pidge gasped, arms raised to shield her face, while something wet hit Hunk’s forehead. His eyes pinched shut as a fluid trickled down towards them, and when he dared open them again his breath caught in his throat.

“I-I think I prefer this to Alien,” Pidge commented, eyes wide behind her glasses as she leaned over the platter and the tiny fuzzy chick cheeping in the center.

Pidge insisted on slipping the rest of the water balloon eggs underneath a lamp to incubate and see if they’d also “hatch”, but when the noisy baby that enjoyed pooping on Hunk’s palm proved the only survivor (or the only fertilized) of the clutch, he happily cooked the rest.

“Are those eggs I smell?” Lance wondered. He skipped across the kitchen from the doorway, a dreamy smile on his face as he loudly inhaled. “Poached?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Pidge said. She flashed a teasing smirk at Hunk.

He scowled and, rather than retorting, watched the eggs - that, now that he had the opportunity to cook and examine them, had an odd green sheen to their yolks - cooking in boiling water.

Lance peeked into the saucepan. “You have ham to go with those green eggs?”

“As soon as Hunk finds a green pig,” Pidge told him.

“Hey, Pidge, can you make yourself useful and check on Ramsay please?” Hunk cut in before she and Lance could get a little too into their teasing.

“Ramsay?” Lance raised an eyebrow. “You have an Egyptian pharaoh hiding in the pantry?”

“That’s Ramses,” Pidge corrected, although she obediently hopped off her stool and walked over to the bin in the corner with the lamp shining over it. “This is Ramsay.”

She scooped up the chick in all his fluffy, cheeping, magenta glory and wandered back towards them. The baby’s eyes slipped shut when she stroked its head, a soft smile on her face.

“Get him out of the kitchen before he poops on his siblings’ remains!” Hunk said, raising a spatula in alarm.

Pidge turned, shielding Ramsay from him and with her lower lip jutting out in a pout. “You’re the one who murdered them.”

“And we both agreed they were never alive!”

“Okay...” Lance glanced between the two of them. “This sounds like some weird science thing I don’t want to get in the middle of.”

“And how do you know Ramsay is male anyway?” Pidge wondered. She lifted the chick to eye level, squinting at his underside. “It’s a chick!”

“There are ways,” Hunk pointed out.

“I’m sure,” she said, rolling her eyes, “but do you know them?”

“Ooh, actually”--Lance raised his hand as he broke out into a broad grin--”if he’s anything like a baby chicken from Earth, I can sex him.”

“You can?” Pidge set Ramsay on her shoulder...just so she could cross her arms.

“Uh, sure?”

“He can milk a cow,” Hunk reminded her. “Why not say if a chick is going to be a rooster or a hen?”

“Huh.” Pidge passed Ramsay to Lance, who...

Well, Lance squealed like a little kid. “Aw, he’s so cute! Just like a chick from Earth!” He poked the tiny barely there tail and ran a finger down the chick’s back.

“So he’s a boy?” Hunk said.

“I didn’t even look yet!” Lance lifted the chick and... “Oh, Hunk, I think you gotta change his name to Rachel Ray or something.”

“Girl?”

“Yep.” Lance grinned and said, “But if it gets us more eggs...”

A gasp escaped him, excitement gripping. “Lance, you’re a genius!” Hunk clapped a hand on his shoulder.

“You can tell that’s a girl,” Pidge said, her eyes wide and incredulous, “but it surprised you when I said I’m one?”

Hunk laughed when Lance only scowled.

Ramsay - name unchanged, despite Lance’s suggestion - ate anything.

She was a hen after Hunk’s own heart.

“Not a very good critic, is she?” Lance commented.

“She’s growing fast,” Allura said. She smiled, cooing over the chick sitting in her lap while the mice looked on with what Hunk guessed must be jealousy.

(He’d have to watch them around Ramsay.)

Predictably, the smile twisted into a disgusted grimace when the chick dropped one on her dress.

“I suppose pets do have their...drawbacks,” Allura mused with a frown.

Hunk scooped her back up and smiled sheepishly. “I’ll keep her confined.”

“And away from Keith’s wolf?” Lance said with a nod at the door.

“Keith’s wolf teleports,” Pidge piped up. “If he wants to eat unripened chicken for breakfast, doors won’t stop him.”

Hunk’s stomach twisted unpleasantly. “I’ll...talk to Keith about that.”

Keith, however...

“You have time to raise a chick on top of being a Paladin?” Keith wondered.

Hunk raised an eyebrow. “I have time to cook for you guys, Lance has time to milk Kaltenecker, Pidge and he have time to play video games, you have time to train till you put too much strain on every muscle in your--”

“Fine, I get it,” Keith cut him off with a hand covering his face.

“Hey, I just wanted to let you know that Kosmo is not allowed anywhere near Ramsay,” Hunk said.

As if summoned by the sound of his name (which...well, he was something like a dog), Kosmo teleported into view in a burst of light. Hunk reflexively stepped away, cradling Ramsay between his hands, but when the cosmic wolf’s nose twitched in curiosity, he extended his arms.

He held his breath as Kosmo sniffed the obliviously cheeping chick. He stiffened when the wolf’s tongue flicked out.

Kosmo licked the chick’s downy feathered back.

“He likes her,” Keith said.

“Yeah b-but how?” Hunk said. “He’s about to give me a heart attack...”

Keith smiled but clicked his tongue. Kosmo spun around at attention, ears on end. “He won’t eat her if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Oh! Oh good.” The tension trickled out of Hunk’s shoulders, and as soon as Keith and Kosmo left he fell into a boneless relieved heap with Ramsay sitting on his stomach.

Ramsay grew to be the size of a chicken in only a few movements. But unlike a chicken from Earth, her down feathers gave way to scales.

“Well, birds on Earth descended from the dinosaurs,” Pidge said.

“She’s really ugly this way,” Lance said.

“Excuse you, she’s my child and she’s beautiful!” Hunk retorted, shooting a glare at him.

“But she looks like a chubby and flightless pterodactyl!” Lance gestured at where Ramsay foraged through the meadow alongside Kaltenecker.

The not-chicken - space chicken, they all, except for Allura and Coran, took to calling her - gathered scraps of grass into a heap, almost like...

“She’s building a nest,” Lance observed with a grin. “Aw, look who’s getting ready to lay eggs!”

“What, already?!” Hunk shot up with alarm, a sudden lump lodging in his throat. “I-I’m not ready to be a grandfather!”

“Relax!” Lance said, standing and patting him on the shoulder. “We’ll be here to support you, but only if I get to be the chicks’ godfather.”

“Uh, you guys are kind of forgetting something important,” Pidge said as she joined them.

“What?”

“Ramsay doesn’t have a mate to fertilize her eggs.”

Hunk exchanged a glance with Lance, then he looked at Pidge. “Oh,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck as embarrassment filled him. “I knew that.”

Hunk never had considered chickens a viable pet before, but Ramsay followed him everywhere. She trailed him through the Castle’s hallways, leaving poop he’d have to clean up later in her wake, and hopped into his lap when he sat down. Her eyes closed in contentment when he rubbed her vicious beak, and she perched for the “night” on his bed frame.

And if Allura, Pidge, Lance, and Keith could have pets, why couldn’t Hunk think of this strange space chicken that imprinted on him as one?

He’d see about Shiro adopting a cat later…once Ramsay learned to lay her eggs in a nest and not on the kitchen floor where a certain princess’s mice could steal them.

[sp4c3-0ddity]

34 kallura please ?

i haven’t written Keith POV, much less kallura, in a while so this might be...rusty. also it’s really weird. canon-verse (probably),

(34) Returned from the dead kiss

Hedoesn’tknow how he got here, to this vast white nothing. All he knows is white…bright…vast…

Two hands and two feet, a nose, lips, eyes…

(Do they work the way eyes should if all hesees is this white emptiness?)

He grimaces as he rolls onto his hands andknees before slowly getting to his feet. The ground is almost soft under hispalms but hard enough he won’t sink into it.

It’s unnerving, but it’s all he knows.

Where am I?

Whoam I?

He wanders aimlessly, no feature catchinghis gaze and offering him a destination. He wonders if he even has a destination, but time stretchesbefore him as endlessly as this expanse of white.

Perhaps he has forever to search.

The longer he walks, the more that memoriestrickle back into his mind.

He knows his name now, can recall hisfather’svoice calling it in good cheer, in disappointment, in anger…

He remembers his father’sdeath, the grief striking him anew so that he falls to his knees with hot tearspricking at his eyes. Standing in front of his grave while the social workerwaits beyond him, jiggling her car keys in impatience.

Keith walks, and walks, and walks, and hewonders how long until his step falters.

Not all who wander are lost.

It’s a quote from a novel, he thinks, but thetitle is one thing he can’t yet recall. But he feels the truth of it with abone-deep ache that threatens to topple him over.

He doesn’t lack for physical strength - pain,hunger, thirst, things of which he only has a faint memory - but the emotionaland mental burdens that steadily return to him almost weigh him down.

Meeting Shiro, learning of the ticking timebomb hanging over his head, losingShiro…

It’s almost a relief when the scene offinding him plays out in his memory, enough that he finds the wherewithal tostand and continue. Maybe Shiro waits for him at the end of whatever this place- is this a place? - is.

After Shiro it’sthe others:  Pidge (why does he lookfamiliar?), Lance, Hunk.

Allura, Coran, the Red Lion…

His mind sticks on Allura, something abouther that he can’tplace, some feeling that’s notfamiliar. So far he’s been able to put a name to every emotion that his teammates -friends? - incite (security for Shiro, a certain protectiveness for Pidge, agrudging respect mingled with exasperation for Lance, a vague fondness forHunk), but for Allura it’s all that…and more.

The light without a source fades, hisfeatureless surroundings bleeding steadily into darkness. What was once awash withwhite now sinks to gray, and Keith guesses it will soon be black.

Pitch black, where he’llbe blind - not that there’s anything to see ahead.

It all vanishes like Shiro the second time,leaving him…butnot alone.

Comfort from his friends, from Allura…butshame fills him when he remembers their first mission with him in the BlackLion, how he struggled to pilot them, to lead his teammates, how Shiro’s returnand his insufficiency pushed him away rather than pulled him closer.

Allura’s reproach when he leaves hits him worst.

Why did I do that? Keith wonders. Why did he leave when histeammates - when Voltron, when Allura - needed him most?

He almost falters, but he forces himself tocontinue walking in the hope that the answer lies ahead.

Everything else bleeds in, his mother andthe wolf and Lotor and Romelle and the clones and Shiro’sdeath.

It doesn’t hit him with the same force as hisdisappearance, not when his presence inside the Black Lion helps him overcome.

And through it all is Allura, revivingShiro in a body that belonged to something - someone - else, gripping his arm while they waited for him to wake.

How she isn’t afraid to ground him, to challenge him,to comforthim, to—

A white light pulses ahead, a beacon in thedark so bright Keith raises an arm to shield his eyes. It lies before him, buthe can’tjudge the distance or time - both are meaningless in this nothing - to reachit.

But he has a destination, his wandering nolonger so aimless, and determination hastens his stride.

It’s when he thinks he only need reach out totouch the light that the world around him changes.

A warmth starts in his chest and spreadsthroughout his body, intensifying and coalescing again in his heart until hecries out in startled pain - the first he’s felt since he woke here. And this timewhen he blinks he stares into vivid blue eyes speckled pink.

Keith sucks in a breath of fresh air, hisarms thrashing and heart pounding. His whole body aches with the force of…ablast?

The rest of his memories return all atonce, the last thing from before he blacked out Allura’sfrightened face.

The same face that hovers over him now.

“A-Allura?”he says, his voice hoarse with disuse. “Are y-you—”

Her soft lips on his silence him, his eyeswidening in surprise and heat rising to his cheeks.

Allura pulls away before Keith can react -his heart sinks in disappointment; maybe he wanted to kiss her back? - andclears her throat. A flush colors her face, offsetting the effect, and he can’thelp but smile, reaching up to brush a loose strand of white hair away from hereyes.

“Y-youscared me,” Allura confesses.

“I-Iknow,” Keith admits. “I’m sorry.”

“Good,”she says, glowering before her brow softens. She clutches his hand in both ofhers, cradling it against her chest, and says, “You need to stop leaving us -stop leaving me.”

His smile widens as something flutters inhis chest, and he promises, “I’ll never leave you again.”

[sp4c3-0ddity]

Coran is a dragon while we’re on the subject (and it’s a long way out). And to sail to break to earn for reasons 👀

To Sail, To Break, To Earn you say?? *sweats* uh well…that would be the round robin pirate/mermaid fic we’re working on…that i need to finish Chapter One of…to followup with your wonderful prologue. the gist of that next chapter is that Pidge is a mermaid and her father was captured by pirates and she’s giving chase (or swim)…

The further she pushed herself, the more the world around her changed. Colors shifted from blues and grays to shades more vibrant as more sunlight filtered through the sea. The water passing over her gills grew warmer, filling her with an energy she was unaccustomed to. It helped to dissipate her sleepiness but did little for the ache in her arms and tail.

"Come on," she hissed to herself, wishing, not for the first time, that she was more inclined to the same athleticism as her peers.

All the while, closer to the surface, closer to an unknown plane of existence, one she only ever dreamed of without daring to touch.

Until now.

As for “Coran is a dragon”, here take the whole (and wow this is old) prologue!!

Coran’s world shattered on the first day of spring.

Of course, when he woke that morning - too late, even by his standards - he wasn’t yet aware of this fact. A mundane spring equinox dawned, the sun’s rays poking through the hidden entrance of his cave and warming his exposed scales.

The sun’s heat energized him, and Coran slowly sat up, his ragged blanket falling into his lap as he extended his arms over his head in a luxurious stretch. His claws just brushed the ceiling, reminding him that they needed trimming, but before he could contemplate it too much he stood.

His limbs ached in a way that had become all too familiar in the last few years, for as the magic tied to the land faded, so did Coran’s strength. His body had been stuck somewhere between dragon and man for over a year now since he so rarely possessed the reserved magical energy to complete a transformation. Would that he could get ahold of a Balmeran crystal…but alas, that required engaging in trade with humans, and dragon though he was, Coran didn’t fancy theft.

Not to mention, in his magic-deprived state he wouldn’t be able to travel far enough to obtain one.

Winter still gripped the valley that Coran called home, the trees brown and bare of leaves. White layered the high peaks ringing it, but in the central, lower part of the valley where the river ran its course, snow never lingered for long.

It didn’t smell of fresh, green growth, at least not yet, only damp and decomposition, leaves wet with melted snow.

Coran’s belly rumbled, moaning for breakfast, but his stores proved drained which meant he had a long, exhausting hunt ahead of him. Frowning, he recalled why he usually disliked the start of spring so much.

Coran daydreamed of a fat rabbit, the kind he’d be able to catch in summer, roasted over a fire he built himself, from scratch, without any of that flint and steel business that Alfor taught him.

It’s an innovation for you, Coran, Alfor had said, grinning as he struck steel to flint.

Coran had rolled his eyes and said, Why should I need innovation when I can ignite my own fire? To demonstrate, he’d exhaled, a lick of flame engulfing the kindling that Alfor laid.

Alfor had jumped back, alarmed as the wood caught fire, but didn’t complain when Coran’s cave flooded with its warmth. Coran didn’t need the fire to keep warm - not in those days - but he still sat with Alfor while they watched the storm pounding away outside.

Coran hiked from his cave down towards the valley floor as the sun rose further over the mountains, light shining off the snow. The river lay below, close enough that the roaring of its current reached his ears, already growing bigger with melted snow.

He hadn’t reached the river yet when a familiar energy struck his limbs, filling his body with strength he hadn’t known in years. Coran laughed gleefully; was the magic returning at last? But now, it was too sudden, too thorough. The land’s magic usually ebbed and flowed like the tide or the seasons, a force of nature unto itself, but this…

Then he spotted three figures walking along the riverbank.

Coran pulled up short, retreating further into a shadow cast by a tree. The three stood at the end of a hidden trail, marked only by the rents in a tree’s bark left behind by Coran’s claws - the start of the trail that would take them directly to his cave.

As they made their way up towards the cave, they disappeared from view, but their voices still traveled up to Coran as they approached:

“…just a little longer,” a man’s voice said, speaking with an unfamiliar accent.

“I’m tired, Sir,” said the voice of a small child, her accent so familiar to Coran that he stiffened. “Can we stop and rest please?”

“No,” the man replied, abrupt. “The f-faster we reach, the sooner y-you’ll be safe.” He panted, as short of breath as the other two - both of whom were children.

The second child spoke up in a softer voice, “Papa, are you—”

“I’m all right, son,” he said, tone firm but with a hint of weakness. “We’ll be there soon, and then we can all r-rest.”

By then they were nearly level with Coran, so he stepped out of his hiding place, standing in their path.

The man pulled up short, thin, heavy-lidded eyes narrowing. He clutched an arm around his middle, and Coran caught the metallic scent of blood on the breeze. But he held the hand of a small boy with black hair, one that bore some resemblance to him, and on his other side was a bigger, wide-eyed girl that Coran…recognized.

Alfor, he thought, his own eyes widening as a prickle of unwelcome familiarity struck him. “Who are you?” he demanded.

The man nudged both children forward. “Atea has fallen,” he told Coran. “The k-king said that you would care for his daughter.”

Coran stared at the girl, who stared right back with a surprising ferocity in her eerie blue eyes. “Why would he think that?”

“He claimed the dragon that lived in the v-valley is his friend,” the man explained. He gritted his teeth, the first obvious expression of pain Coran had seen on him, but plowed on, “He kept her birth a s-secret, so no one will come looking for her.”

Coran crossed his arms. “And what am I to do with an orphaned princess?” he asked.

“Keep her safe,” he said.

He scanned the white-haired princess, who clutched tightly to the boy’s arm. “Is he the king’s son?”

To his amazement, the man snorted with amusement. “Of course not,” he said, gripping his hand. “He’s mine.”

“But—”

“I need you to take them both,” said the man. “M-my son is—” He coughed, reaching up to wipe his mouth, not even grimacing when his fingers came away wet with blood. “Find his mother, in Daibazaal. His mother will know what to do.” He then knelt on the ground, in front of the boy, and muttered to him, low enough that Coran had no doubt he didn’t want him to eavesdrop, but he couldn’t help it:

“Keith, you have your mother’s knife,” he said. “Keep it safe, and keep it close. Do not give it to anyone.”

The boy - Keith - nodded.

The man sighed shakily and wrapped his arms around him, pulling him close. “Take care of Princess Allura,” he said, but then his eyes slipped past him and landed on the girl. “Take care of each other.” He withdrew from Keith and stood, and Coran, surprising himself, reached forward to catch him before he could stumble.

“Princess Allura needs to stay hidden,” the man told Coran, his fingernails digging into his arms with surprising strength. “She needs to. Please, dragon, I beg you to help me make up for my mistake.”

Coran stared at him uncomprehendingly, and he said, “You say Altea fell, but what happened to the king?” His heart pounded while he waited, and though he knew the answer already, he needed - he dreaded - confirmation.

“Zarkon slew King Alfor,” said the man, firm. “Krolia’s research - my fault—” He shook, with grief that echoed Coran’s own.

His chest ached, a lump forming in his throat, but if this man spoke the truth - and he believed him - then Alfor’s blood stood before him, needed him. “I’ll care for her, sir,” he promised, “and for your son.”

(He didn’t know how to care for children, but he would try.)

He smiled, face glowing in relief, though the effect was ruined by a drop of blood trailing from the corner of his mouth. Coran helped him lie down, noting that Keith sat and pillowed his father’s head in his lap. He stroked his sweaty hair out of his face while Allura squatted beside him.

“You’ll be all right, Sir,” Allura reassured the man, taking one of his hands in both of hers. “W-we can heal you.”

“Maybe someday you can, Princess,” the man said. He reached up to touch his son’s cheek. “Maybe someday…”

His hand fell away from Keith’s cheek to the ground, the light of life leaving his eyes.

“Papa?” Keith said, leaning down towards his face.

“Keith,” Allura, likely older by at least a year, said. Tears streamed from her cheeks, and Coran had to wonder what this poor child already knew of death. She rested her hand on Keith’s shoulder, but—

“Papa!” Keith said. He shook his father’s shoulders, trying to wake him, but before Allura could stop him, he stopped himself and sobbed the awful, heart-rending sobs of a bereaved child.

Allura clutched him close to her while he cried, trying to comfort a newly orphaned boy despite her own tears. Coran stepped towards them, glancing down the path in the direction from which they came, and though he trusted that the man had been careful to evade pursuit, he said, “Let’s go home.”

“H-he said we can’t go back to Lion City,” Allura told him.

“No, Princess,” Coran told her, engulfing her and Keith in his arms, “I speak of your new home.”

It was only later that he realized that the magic in his bones came directly from these two children he’d been charged to care for.

[sp4c3-0ddity]

and another birthday generator prompt fill for @itsdecaffeinatedgentleman. they asked for katt with ‘time-traveling assassins’...though not a cliffhanger ending. For that i apologize, but this has been sitting in a .txt file for way too long so i wanted to go ahead and get it out there. ~1500 words, and hope you like it!!

Keith trailed a few meters behind his target, hood over his head ostensibly to protect his ears from the cold. She spoke on the phone while she walked, her hands moving animatedly with her words, and Keith caught a few snatches of conversation.

“…pick something up and then I’ll be there,” she said. “Yes, Matt, I know I promised I wouldn’t be late this time, but I got held up at work…”

Keith’s heart pounded in anticipation when she ducked into a nearby bakery. He lingered outside, leaning against the building with an unlit cigarette between his fingers, eyes fixed on the sidewalk rather than on the city crowds passing by.

The city itself was both familiar and unfamiliar to Keith; it was his hometown, the place of his birth, but by then it had already fallen decades before. Seeing it like this, vibrant and healthy, its people smiling and going about their business, brought an envious ache to his chest.

The envy sharpened into anger, directed at the young woman inside the bakery. Keith scowled, fingers automatically curling around the hilt of the knife hidden in his jacket, but Kolivan’s voice whispered caution to him:

“Do not let emotion guide your hand. Remember that there is no going back for you; if you are seen - if there are witnesses - there will be consequences.”

Keith exhaled and forced his grip to loosen, right as his target left the bakery with a white box in her arms. He resumed his hunt, hanging back a few paces so she wouldn’t notice him, and when she finally stepped into an apartment building, Keith stopped.

He knew from research he’d done that his target lived on the fifth floor, but for now he would wait, preferring to fulfill his task in the cover of darkness.

Keith counted his blessings that Katie Holt, despite being a prodigious computer scientist, lived in such a dingy apartment. Though the fire escape creaked more than he liked under his weight, the noise was soft and unobtrusive enough to be blamed on a brisk evening breeze.

He wedged the tip of his knife underneath the window, smirking when the lock proved broken and he could push it up. Then, carefully, he crept inside, his feet sinking into a soft rug.

The tinny sound of speakers drifted into the living room. Keith, grip on his knife tight, crept away from the room and down the hallway towards a closed bedroom, lighting streaming into the hall from underneath the door.

Music played inside, something loud and catchy that would not become ‘classic’ enough to still be known in Keith’s time, but it suited him and masked any noise he might make.

Patience yields focus. His old mentor’s words echoed through his head once he stood in front of the door, resting his hand on the doorknob.

(Never mind that Shiro would disapprove if he could see Keith now…)

Keith turned the knob and shoved the door open; he shot inside, barely processing his surroundings even as the door bounced against the wall. He only saw his target, her eyes wide, where she stood with a pair of glasses halfway between her face and a vanity.

She dropped her glasses, putting her hands up reflexively, but Keith moved too fast for her to fight him, knife already angled towards her throat. But then—

She caught Keith’s wrist, and during that split-second shift, Keith met her eyes.

They were too high.

Keith stared, hesitating as he finally took in more details. Hair too short, the glasses, the slender but masculine build, the—

His distraction cost him, and the man snatched the knife from Keith’s hand. He held it improperly, grip too loose, but then Keith was unarmed.

But not defenseless.

Keith stepped back, effortlessly sliding into a defensive stand, the kind to defend against a short blade, but the man that faced him didn’t attack.

Instead he demanded, “Why did you attack me?”

Keith bit his lip. “Who are you?”

The man blinked and said, “You just broke into my apartment and attacked me with a knife!” He gestured around the room, pointing at a set of speakers balanced on a bedside table. “What, don’t tell me you’re my neighbor and filing a noise complaint?”

Absurdly, the catchy tune playing in the background lent their altercation a strange atmosphere, but Keith had all but tuned it out, head lost in his objective until now.

“I…no,” Keith said.

The man snorted, raising the knife to his face and examining it without taking his attention off of Keith. “Odd sort of metal though,” he observed, eyes flitting up to him. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Is it some kind of steel?”

“Luxite,” Keith told him with a shrug.

“Lux-what?” he said. “I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s forged from a rare metal mined from deep underground,” Keith explained. “It hasn’t been discovered yet.”

He crossed his arms and stared at Keith skeptically. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that you haven’t developed the technology to be able to mine it,” he said. He relaxed his posture, and though he was wary of leaving witnesses - of telling them too much - he held no grudge against this man who looked eerily like his target.

For some reason, the man laughed so hard he wrapped an arm around his belly while Keith stared at him, bewildered. When he caught his breath, he smiled and said, “Are you from the future or something, here to kill me for some choice I make that affects it?” He rubbed the back of his neck and added, “Oh, I always knew I was destined for great things, so I’m glad to know my efforts are finally paying off.”

Keith gaped at him, arms hanging loosely at his sides; his heart pounded, shocked that he could’ve guessed the truth so easily. “Not you,” he said when he recovered.

The man sobered immediately, eyes round with surprise. “Wait, what?”

He shook his head. “You’re not the one scientist I’m looking for.”

“Oh, you have Star Wars in the future?” he said with a smirk.

Keith scowled and crossed his arms. “We are not fighting stars,” he retorted tersely. “Now, I have a mission, and since I’ve gotten you mixed up with someone else…maybe you can help me?”

“Exchange one life for the many?” He tapped his cheek, eyes darting around as he mulled it over. “How do I know you’re not just some psychopath trying to get away with murder?”

“I stopped when I realized you weren’t my target.”

“So you did,” the man agreed. He sat at the foot of his bed, Keith’s knife still held loosely between his hands, then glanced up at him. “Then who is your target?”

Heat flared under Keith’s collar under the man’s sharp gaze, making him almost as anxious as the memory of Kolivan’s warnings to be discreet, to avoid notice and detection. Yet here he stood before the man that he mistook for his target, conversing with him and…asking for his help.

Keith didn’t know this city, this time, like he knew his own, or that was how he rationalized what he said next:

“I’m looking for a scientist named Katie Holt.”

The effect on the man was instantaneous, anger overflowing as he shot upright and used the few extra centimeters he had in height to tower over Keith. “You won’t have any help from me,” he said, voice low and dangerous.

Keith blinked, but he refused to back down. “And why not?” he said, glaring up at him. “You said it yourself:  one life for the many. This Katie Holt is—”

“My sister,” said the man, “and you will not go anywhere near her.”

His heart sank, heavy with dread, and faced with the protective brother of his target Keith regretted convincing Kolivan to choose him.

[sp4c3-0ddity]

Are you still taking prompts? Can I request a one shot about one of the paladins or Matt discovering her preteen fanfiction efforts?

if this doesn’t give you secondhand embarrassment, then i have failed as a writer. also because i don’t know anything about any video game ever, the source material is something a little…different so this is as embarrassing for me as it is for Pidge probably. hope you like it!! ~900 words

and the headcanon (though it didn’t come out quite as feels-y)

I knew I should’ve wiped the hard drive, was the first thought to enter Pidge’s head when she spotted Hunk standing over her desk in the Green Lion’s hangar, his face much too close to her computer screen and his hands hovering over the keyboard.

The second thought that entered her head wasn’t a thought so much as an immediately vocalized screech. “HUNK!”

Hunk turned slowly, Pidge’s heart pounding wildly in the intervening time. She’d told him she didn’t like anyone touching her stuff, and dear God, did he see anything? What if he saw the old goofy photos of her and Matt, like the one where she wore a bikini to the beach and acquired a livid red sunburn on her shoulders? What if he saw the shoujo manga she used to read in her rare free time? What if he saw that never-to-be-seen-by-the-light-of-day half-finished love letter for–

“Hey, you wrote pretty well when you were a kid,” Hunk observed with a smile, pointing at something on her screen.

Pidge, surprised, blinked at him, any retort she might’ve made at any half-imagined comment fleeing her mind. “Uh…what?” she said dumbly.

“You wrote really well,” Hunk said. He beckoned her closer, and when Pidge joined him and let her eyes fall on the screen, she coughed.

“Wait, what?” she said again, stunned and hot with embarrassment as the face of her old, buried in both memory and digital dust, fan fiction stared back at her. “That’s not…that’s not…that’s–” She cleared her throat, pretending that she didn’t notice Hunk’s concerned frown, and said, “I didn’t write that.”

“You didn’t?” Hunk pointed at a line near the top. “Then why does it say ‘By Katie Holt’ here?”

Pidge narrowed her eyes at the screen and said, “Okay, I wrote it, but I didn’t write it.”

“That makes absolutely no sense,” Hunk told her.

Pidge rubbed her warm face and groaned. “What I mean is that I wrote this document you have open–”

“The one about the fighting cats with their rituals and stuff?”

Pidge scowled at him, the very act of him daring to utter a summary of her childhood endeavors in writing offended her, and said, “Yes, that one. But what I’m saying is that I wrote this story, but it was from…” She waved a hand, searching for a word that didn’t sound as bad - that didn’t make her want to curl up into a ball and hide under the desk or, better yet, throw herself out of an airlock - as fan fiction.

(Not that she knew what fan fiction was at the tender age of eleven; she just wanted to play in another author’s world for fun, never mind that there was an actual name for what she was doing!)

“They’re not…my characters,” Pidge explained carefully to Hunk. “It’s not my world; it’s based on a book series I loved as a kid.” She stared at the floor between them, pulse racing as she awaited his judgment.

“Oh, so it’s fan fiction?” When she glanced up in surprise at his nonchalant tone, he raised an eyebrow at her. “Did you think I’d laugh at you?”

“Yes,” she admitted.

Hunk smiled and said, “Why would I do that? I mean, this Fireheart guy is pretty relatable.”

“That’s because he’s always worried,” Pidge deadpanned, but something in her was soothed by Hunk’s ease.

He chuckled and said, “Oh, that explains everything. But seriously, Pidge”–he patted her back–”I think it’s pretty cool! How old were you when you wrote this?”

“Eleven,” Pidge said.

“Wow, yeah, that’s really awesome,” Hunk said. He angled his head towards the screen and said, “My older sister is a high school English teacher for AP kids, and some of the stuff she made me help her grade isn’t nearly this good.”

Daring to hope she would get out of this encounter unscathed, Pidge smiled at him. “Really?”

Hunk nodded. “Really.”

Pidge grinned at him, and as Hunk said something about going to find something to eat, she remembered why they had this enlightening conversation in the first place. “Hey, Hunk,” she said, “what were you doing here anyway?”

Hunk froze with his back to her, but then he slowly turned, pressing his fingers together. “Oh, uh, well, Allura wanted to talk to you about your brother, and your computer was on and open, so I, uh…” He smiled sheepishly and said, “I’m a snoop, Pidge. You know this.”

Pidge reached across her desk and snapped her computer shut - maybe she’d leave the hard drive intact, at least for now. But she crossed her arms, tapping her foot irritably, and said, “You know I don’t like it when you touch my stuff.”

“I know,” Hunk said, “but it was too hard to resist the temptation. Also…” He smiled, something in it downright mischievous. “Maybe, after you meet with Allura, we can do a little quid pro quo?”

Intrigued, Pidge raised an eyebrow at him. “What did you have in mind?”

They linked arms as they walked through the hangar and back towards the entrance, and Hunk said, “Well, let me tell you about that time Lance and I binge-watched the worst, most violent anime in existence…”

By the time Pidge found Allura and Hunk found his lunch, both of them were breathless with laughter.

[sp4c3-0ddity]

For the Discord. Prompt:  ‘Flash Fiction’ (so meant to be under 500 words but I accidentally went over a bit whoops)

Gen, fluff. Enjoy!!

now read on ao3!!

“Hunk.”

Hunk held his breath and clasped his hands together when he heard Allura’s voice behind him. His gaze swiveled down to his feet before springing back up again, and he slowly pivoted and faced what would likely be his demise.

“Good evening, Princess,” he said. He plastered the fakest smile he could muster onto his face.

Allura raised an eyebrow at him and frowned…right before pointing at the ground at his feet. “What, exactly, are those?”

Hunk glanced down, then jumped and yelped, pretending to be bewildered by what he found. “Oh, these?” He gestured towards the five tiny – really, each one only reached his ankle in height – creatures clustered around his shoes. “These are…I have no idea what these are.”

Allura hummed thoughtfully, crouching in front of him to get a better look. She held a hand out, but the things – which, to Hunk, looked like a cross between an owlet, a duckling, and a frog – shifted, putting him between them and the princess. “Where did you find them?” Allura wondered.

Hunk shuffled his feet, carefully so he wouldn’t tread on one by accident. “Uh, on my last mission to Helion,” he said. “I landed outside the city; there was a lake. And then…” He shrugged and smiled sheepishly. “I think they imprinted on me, like ducklings.”

“What is a ‘duckling’?” Allura asked. She stood upright but kept glancing between Hunk’s face and the babies that trailed him like he was their mother.

“A duckling is a baby duck.” At Allura’s continued confusion, he added, “A duck is a type of water fowl.”

Allura crossed her arms. “Hunk, I am not familiar with the fauna from your planet.”

Hunk clasped his hands together and chuckled. “Right, I keep forgetting that. Uh…a fowl is a bird? A bird is an animal with wings and feathers; some fly, some swim…some, like ducks, do both?” He smiled hopefully at Allura.

To his relief, she nodded, smiling slightly in understanding. “Oh,” she said. “I suppose we had something like a duck then on Altea.”

“A…dooflaz, Pidge called it?”

“Yes!” Allura grinned. “But I don’t remember their young doing that.” She pointed to the creatures still peering at her from around Hunk’s legs.

Hunk squatted, holding a hand out to the smallest one, which sniffed at it. “Yeah, they think I’m their mother, probably.” Then he frowned, eyes widening, and a thrill of familiar anxiety hit him. “Oh, no, I don’t know what to feed them!”

“I suppose you could try different things?” Allura suggested.

Hunk stood, grabbing her by the shoulders. “But what if I poison one by accident? What if I—”

“All right, calm down!” Allura pried his hands off – Hunk mumbled an apology – and added, “And perhaps Coran can search the Castle’s database. We may have some old information about Helion fauna.”

“Yes, that’s…a good idea.” Hunk exhaled a sigh of relief, his heartbeat slowing. “I think I’ll go figure that out now, actually. They’ve been trailing me for a while, so they’re probably hungry already.”

As if corroborating his statement, the five of them started chirping.

It was adorable, Hunk thought, but he had a feeling it would get very old, very fast.

[sp4c3-0ddity]

Gen fic (with lotura if you squint) for, ironically, the Pidgance Positivty Discord song prompt. I shuffled the music on my phone and chose the fifth song and got Muse’s “Assassin”.

There is politics, a bit of intrigue, ~themes~, and…it’s a mess

also i’m still working on how i interpret Lotor’s character

~3000 words. not proofread because it’s late and i’m lazy. enjoy!!

now on ao3!!

A storm brewed in Rigel Seven’s atmosphere, dark and heavy and full of promise, though Allura couldn’t say what, exactly, that promise would be. She dared to hope it would be good, but she wasn’t naïve enough not to expect the worst.

As the Castle descended to Rigel Seven’s surface – a desert landscape hidden beneath rare, dense clouds – Coran verbally reviewed the information she would need – or that he thought she would need – while treating with the leader of the ruling faction. Allura tuned him out for the most part, focusing most of her attention on holding the Castle of Lions steady against the forces of the storm. Lightning violently arced across the sky, ends vanishing far below and likely striking the ground, but the Castle’s shields protected its passengers from even the slightest hint of charge.

Allura still imagined the scorched scent of ozone, despite the controlled air inside, still thought the fine hairs on the back of her neck stood on end with electricity. Perhaps if she touched a metal surface, static would jolt her, causing energy to dance along her skin, so much like quintessence that—

“Princess?” Coran said.

Allura flinched, turning her head and blinking at him; she hadn’t realized she’d been so lost in thought that he noticed. “Coran?” she prompted.

“Did you hear anything I said?” Coran demanded. He shifted his feet, crossing his arms and tapping fingers against them while a frustrated puff of air stirred his mustache.

The sight was so familiar to Allura that she couldn’t help the giggle that escaped her lips. “I’m afraid I did not,” she admitted. “I was piloting.”

“Yes, because piloting the Castle takes as much mental concentration as piloting the Blue Lion,” Coran supplied sardonically.

Allura smiled, face warm with embarrassment. “It takes a fair amount, especially landing.”

Coran twirled his mustache. “Well, so long as we can all walk out of this meeting with our lives intact and with an alliance, I shall offer no complaint.”

Allura wrinkled her nose very slightly; this spiel of Coran’s was, of course, not the first she’d heard about the Rigellians’ dominant party, and she doubted it would be the last of he had anything to say about it. She approached with great wariness, especially since all but one of the Lions, along with their respective Paladins, was away from the Castle on their own missions. All she had within easy distance for support was the Castle itself, the Blue Lion, Coran, and…Prince Lotor.

She was still unsure exactly what to make of Zarkon’s son, especially when she learned he was half-Altean.

Allura’s hand tightened into fists, knuckles whitening. She’d thought she and Coran were the last ones…

“The Rigellians will not be a problem,” Allura reassured Coran as she finally landed the Castle just outside the limits of their capital.

Usually thin metal spires with upper levels connected by bridges would rise from the stony ground, but on a stormy day like this one, clouds obscured even the middle levels of the skyscrapers, not a hint of sunlight reflecting off a glass window or metallic surface.

“I still think we should have invited them aboard,” Coran said.

Allura bit her lip, and bit back a short response. “And I still think we make a better show of good will if we meet them on their own ground, where they’re most comfortable.” She led Coran from the bridge and down through the entryway, but her ears caught the sound of footsteps just behind her. She paused, bringing herself and Coran up short of the Castle’s grand entrance, and glanced over her shoulder to see Lotor standing at the top of the stairs.

“I trust you can provide your own entertainment while we are gone, Prince Lotor,” Allura told him stiffly. She knew the mice would watch him in her absence, and that he knew, and so had little reason to suspect him of foul play even without the Paladins there to help.

“I asked you not to use that title,” Lotor retorted neutrally. He slowly walked the steps until they stood on level ground.

Allura watched every movement, back straight and shoulders stiff. “Then what, exactly, should I call you?” she wondered.

“My name serves the purpose,” he said. “That is, I suppose, why my parents gave me one, so that I would have something by which people could call me while a fugitive.”

Allura pinched her lips together, trying not to show that she was amused by his comment despite herself. “Very well, Lotor,” she said, “though I’m afraid I have no time for you now. I’m due for a meeting with General Sahr.”

“About that, Princess,” Lotor said, raising an arm as if to touch her shoulder before reconsidering. “General Sahr has only recently come into power after an insurgency against a pro-Empire government, so he will be…wary of anything you might offer him.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Yes, I was at the briefings,” she said, “and it seems as if you were as well.”

Lotor smiled. “I was curious.”

“I’m sure you were.”

They stared at each other for a few long tics, Allura frowning and cautious and Lotor smiling and a little hopeful, she suspected. But she needed to do this alone.

Allura turned on her heel and beckoned for Coran, who’d watched the conversation silently with an odd, thoughtful expression on his face. “I thank you for your advice, Lotor, but I’m afraid I must leave you behind.”

“As you wish, Princess,” Lotor said, with a hint of disappointment that Allura wondered if she imagined.

She put it out of her mind for now, instead stalking towards the Castle entrance with Coran forced to widen his steps to keep up with her. The doors slid open at her approach, a sudden gust of damp wind nearly knocking her off her feet and plastering her dress against her body, but she pumped her arms with a renewed and vested interest to see this alliance go through. So what if she’d originally contacted the foreign minister of the previous, pro-Empire government? So what if she had to now deal with a Rigellian she had reason to suspect was a military dictator?

Allura scowled, shielding her face against the steady stream of water droplets falling from the sky and wishing she’d had the foresight to wear her pink Paladin armor. The better to look intimidating and impressive to a general, someone who would know strength when she saw it.

“Perhaps Lotor had some valuable insights,” Coran offered.

“I’m sure he has many,” Allura conceded reluctantly, “but I don’t need them.”

A party of Rigellians awaited her beneath a temporary shelter, a fabric awning that shielded them from the rain. Their dark coppery skin didn’t shine like she’d half-expected, and even their helmets looked dull. In fact, between their armor of rusting chain mail and windblown appearance, they scarcely seemed a race that invented space travel.

Her hands tightened into fists, and she remembered General Sahr’s explanation of their struggle against the last government, that hoarded and coveted resources for the few; this was just what they had, Allura thought, and they must’ve consciously decided to maintain a humble appearance.

Aside from their armor, Rigellians had curious long, thick eyelashes and two sets of eyelids. Their eyes were cloudy with cataracts, and Allura guessed they could all be at least partially blind, which seemed odd for warriors. Most had black hair, texture ranging from thin and straight, bangs poking out from underneath helmets, to thick and curly.

A Rigellian with a helmet tucked under her arm stepped forward and rested a hand against her armored chest. Unsmilingly, she greeted her, “Well met, Princess Allura.” Cloudy black eyes flashed, unfocused, up towards her face. “I am General Sahr, the interim leader of Rigel Seven while we establish a new government.”

“Well met, General,” Allura said. She smiled and mimicked the hand-to-chest gesture. “Will we be negotiating out here in the storm?”

“This weather is unseasonable,” General Sahr admitted, “so we must return to the city. We brought our hoverpods, and you and your attendant can ride with me.”

“We would be happy to,” Allura said pleasantly. She followed General Sahr towards the small collection of mismatched pods beyond the awning, which a few unarmored Rigellians, unnoticed earlier, quickly dismantled and loaded into the back of a hoverpod smaller than the rest.

General Sahr climbed into the back of a hoverpod with scraped white paint, Allura stepping in behind her. She was then dismayed to see that the interior of the pod was much smaller than she’d thought from the outside, so Coran was forced to sit in the front along with the driver.

Allura pinched her thigh as she sat, freezing her smile in place and hoping it didn’t have a nervous edge to it. At least in here they were out of the wind and wet, she reminded herself as the driver took off towards the city. At least in here she could begin to reason with General Sahr, to warm her up to the idea of the Coalition without mentioning her…predecessors.

General Sahr proved resistant to small talk, only answering Allura’s polite queries with a few words or less. Allura grew frustrated with each response that wasn’t followed up with a question of her own, and became more and more convinced that she was not dealing with a diplomat but with a soldier, someone effective as a leader of a single planet, perhaps, but not as a representative amongst a group of leaders.

“I had hoped to catch a glimpse of one of the famed beasts,” General Sahr then said, startling Allura out of the stony silence she’d descended into after another single-word reply.

Allura perked up hopefully. “Oh, I might be able to arrange that after our meeting,” she promised. “I’m afraid all but the one are away, unfortunately.”

“One is more than enough,” General Sahr reassured her.

Allura grinned as the hoverpod slowed to a halt. She disembarked ahead of the general, who waved for her to precede her out, and stepped onto a tiled pathway covered by a wide awning that spanned the entire street. The soft patter of water echoed through the sort of tunnel formed, while a slower wind than out in the open stirred the hem of Allura’s dress. Here the humidity lent an almost pleasant warmth to the air, and Allura found herself smiling a little wider as Coran rejoined her.

“Enjoying yourself?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

“So far, so good,” she said with a nod while they followed General Sahr and the rest of the Rigellian party into a building labeled with an alphabet that she couldn’t read.

The building itself was quite grand, because rather than metallic buildings that sought to touch the sky, this one emitted a sense of tradition, with a wide domed roof and narrow towers at its four corners. A government building, Allura thought, and an old one at that.

Allura climbed the stairs, Coran just behind her. Something like delight coursed through her, but another feeling – a sense of the mice in the back of her head, perhaps an animalistic instinct that even the most sapient of beings couldn’t quench – kept her on her toes, made her aware that something still felt distinctly wrong about this.

“Is this a museum?” Allura asked a random Rigellian that kept pace with her and Coran.

He blinked all his eyelids at her, as if surprised she addressed him, then nodded and said, “According to General Sahr, it is a relic of the old way.”

Allura raised an eyebrow at him. “It documents your history then,” she said.

He nodded, an odd jerky movement, but offered no more.

Allura frowned and glanced at Coran. “There’s something odd here.”

“I agree,” he said, “which is why I wish—”

“I know,” Allura interrupted, “but it does no good to think of that now, not while we’re already here.”

The Rigellians led the way into a long room full of, sure enough, exhibits, everything from stone tablets to paper documents encased in glass. She glanced over them curiously, ultimately unsurprised when she couldn’t glean the meaning of a single word – if she couldn’t read modern Rigellian, then surely their ancient language would be far beyond her.

Taking quick steps to pass most of the group, Allura pulled up beside General Sahr. “Where are we going?” she wondered.

“There is a gathering of citizens behind the museum,” General Sahr explained. “I will address them and explain your presence. They will be alarmed after seeing your Castle descend from the sky.”

Allura frowned. “But the storm will have masked our arrival,” she said. “I understand the importance of transparency, General, but surely this can wait till after—”

“It cannot,” the general interrupted with a jerky nod. An unarmored attendant pushed open a set of blue double doors ahead of them, and the sound of a crowd greeted them, loud enough to nearly overpower the sound of the raging storm.

General Sahr stepped outside and onto a stage. She approached a podium, and Allura and Coran lingered closer to the doorway, a little more sheltered from the wind despite the street here also being covered.

General Sahr spoke to the crowd, giving a surprisingly impassioned speech about the necessity of change and freedom from wealthy oppressors. The crowds cheered her on, waving their arms and applauding when she paused to breathe. But then she stepped away from the podium, gesturing for Allura to approach.

“And now, my beloved, free citizens,” General Sahr said to her people, “I invite you to decide for yourself if you wish to follow this Voltron Coalition. Are we to subjugate ourselves to someone else so soon after being freed of men that would’ve had us scraping for the Galra Empire’s approval?”

“What?” Allura said, eyes widening in shock. Distantly she felt Coran’s hand on her shoulder, fingers digging into her skin, but her heart pounded in her ears, almost drowning out the raucousness of the crowd – the mob, it now seemed – and the storm. The wind tore the breath from her lungs, or it escaped her in a gasp as she found herself standing at the podium, facing down a now-silent audience hostile to her.

Allura cleared her throat and struggled to gather her thoughts. Was that really what General Sahr thought of the Voltron Coalition? Irrational tears pricked at her eyes, but she tightly gripped the edge of the podium, stiffening her back and her resolve.

She needed to salvage this, desperately.

“People of Rigel Seven,” Allura began, speaking in the loud, clear voice her father and Coran both taught her would project confidence, “I speak to you not as a leader today, but as a beggar, and not on behalf of the Voltron Coalition—”

“Liar!” someone close to the front shouted.

Despite a few others taking up their cry, Allura plowed on, “—but on behalf of another planet that suffered at the hands of the Empire long before yours. I am from—”

This time, the scream that rang out succeeded in interrupting her, and, as if in slow motion, a Rigellian with their face covered shot out of the crowd on a small hovercraft. They raised a blaster—

“Princess!” Coran screamed.

A tall figure leapt from the crowd, tackling the would-be assassin to the ground. The surrounding Rigellians shrunk away, shrieking in alarm, and General Sahr dispatched a security team towards the altercation.

Allura meanwhile stared out in shock, at least until General Sahr appeared at her shoulder. “Is that something to do with you?” she demanded, pointing angrily at the crowd now being forcibly dispersed.

General Sahr slowly blinked at her, cloudy eyes shining more than before, and she said, “It was not, Princess.”

Allura crossed her arms. “And how am I supposed to believe that after the speech you just gave?”

The general pressed a hand to her forehead in an apparent sign of distress. “Princess, you must believe me when I say I wanted my people to choose based on your words, not for one man to decide he knew already what we should do.”

“You are in charge, General,” Allura said, prodding her in the shoulder, “temporary or not, and it is up to you to decide—”

“General!” an armored Rigellian climbing the stage interrupted as they approached. Another four Rigellian soldiers followed, each pair bearing a heavy burden. Two carried the attempted assassin, their face now uncovered, while the other two—

“Prince Lotor?” Allura gasped, staring at the newcomer. But a fresh wave of anger displaced her shock, and she scowled at him and asked, “What the quiznak are you doing here?”

Lotor raised his head and pushed the Rigellians that held him off. They acquiesced and let him go at a nod from General Sahr, and he said, “Reminding you not to call me that, and saving your life as well, apparently.”

“How did you know?” Allura said, narrowing her eyes at him suspiciously. She rested her hands on her hips, anticipating having to verbally wrestle him for an honest answer.

Lotor grimaced and said, “I did not, but I suspected that Rigel Seven wouldn’t take kindly to you if they thought you were trying to impose your will on them.” He glanced at General Sahr, but when she neither confirmed nor denied this, he said, “It seems I was right about at least one fool.” He nodded towards the assassin, who was already being dragged into the museum, perhaps for more questioning.

Allura crossed her arms and glanced at Coran.

Coran sighed and said, “I think you owe him your gratitude.”

Allura frowned but bowed her head to Lotor. “Thank you,” she said, trying to soften her voice, “for saving my life.” Her eyes snapped up to his face, and she stiffly added, “Even if you left the Castle to do it after I warned you not to.” She bit her lip and thought, I just hope no one here recognizes who exactly you are.

“Now,” she said, straightening and rounding General Sahr, “I believe you and I should continue our negotiations privately.”

General Sahr nodded. Then, to Allura’s surprise – and a hint of delight – she smiled. “Yes,” she said, “and I think you would do well to keep this protector of yours with you.”

“He’s not my—” Allura cut herself off and rolled her eyes. “Yes, I suppose I should,” she agreed reluctantly. She followed General Sahr inside, and this time both Coran and Lotor came with her.

[sp4c3-0ddity]

I would like to see how you would spin number 31 into gen. 🙂

you may ask wtf is going on, and i would have an answer for you

“I have no idea,” would be the answer

also:  Lance’s logic is bizarre but i’m like 99.9% sure it would still be in character…if this wasn’t crack-ish. and i couldn’t resist the urge to worldbuild and pseudo-science which is how it got a little longer

Word count ~2400 words. hope it at least gets a laugh

Now on ao3!!

(31) “I can’t keepkissing strangers and pretending that they’re you.”

“Wait, the Besayans greet each other how?”

Allura took a very obvious very deep breath, eyes closed infalse serenity, at Hunk’s stunned disbelieving question. “Like I already said,the Besayans greet strangers at firstmeeting with a peck on the lips.”

“You’re kidding,” said Lance, his own eyes wide. Oh, was herelieved that Hunk would tag-teamwith the princess on diplomacy this round…

“I am not,” Allura told them. She folded her hands on thetable, halfway through explaining the protocol that she and Hunk would have totake while treating with the Besayans. “It’s meant to communicate a willingnessto trust and get to know each other, so while it is not our custom – or yours”—she glanced at Hunk, smilingreassuringly—“in this case it is better to participate. Fortunately they’re notas touchy as others we’ve dealt with.” Her smile took on a very strainedquality at some recollection; Keith was probably with her at the time, Lanceguessed. “Still, under no circumstances are you to touch any of their hands. Handshakes are gestures reserved for closefriends, family, and lovers.”

“Great,” Hunk said. He looked faintly ill as he considered.“No shaking hands, just skipping straight to kissing.”

“Hmm, I wonder what baseball is like on Besaya,” Lancemused, flashing a grin at Hunk.

“I’ve met with Besayans, Princess Allura,” the fourth intheir meeting piped up. Prince Lotor rested his elbow on the table, chin in hishand, looking relaxed despite the fact that he was still functionally theirprisoner, albeit a very compliant and mobileone. His odd colored eyes met Allura’s, and he added, “I would be happy toaccompany you to this meeting.”

Lance rolled his eyes at Hunk while he resisted the urge tomake some snappy comeback; while everyone else – even Keith – seemed relieved enough to have their one-time pursuantaboard the Castle, Lance couldn’t help but be suspicious that it was all some grand ploy to take over.

“You’re just jealousbecause Allura actually likes him,” Hunk had pointed out.

“Not true!” Lancehad retorted. “I just don’t think he’strustworthy.”

“None of us reallytrusts him, Lance,” Pidge had said. She’d rolled her eyes and added, “Besides, he’s powerless now. What’s hegoing to do?”

“Charm us all andsteal the Castle right from under our feet?”

Well, so far, everyone else was right, but so far, Lotorhadn’t had the chance to reveal his true colors…probably.

“Hunk can handle it,” Lance interjected loyally when Alluradidn’t immediately.

No, she seemed to be thinkingabout Lotor’s suggestion, but at Lance’s words she quickly agreed, “Yes,Prince Lotor, I think bringing you along so soon after you’ve joined us wouldnot endear our cause to the Besayans, I’m sorry to say.”

Lotor glanced from her, to Hunk, to Lance, and back to her,and then he said, “You’re as correct as always, Princess. The Besayans sufferedas much as anyone else at the hands of the Galra Empire.”

“Thank you for understanding,” Allura replied.

“Yeah, thanks,” Lance muttered under his breath. He ignoredthe sharp, reproachful look Hunk shot him in favor of narrowing his eyes atLotor, still suspicious that he would try something.

“This is Lotor’s fault!” Lance decided when Hunk came downwith a nasty – but not severe – illness the quintant before Allura’s scheduleddiplomatic meeting with the Besayans.

“No, it’s definitely not,” Pidge told him. She held thebiometric scanner – a nifty piece of Altean technology that endlesslyfascinated her despite biology not being her ‘area of expertise’ – up to Hunk,slowly drawing it along his body while Lance hovered worriedly.

Hunk only sneezed.

“See?” Pidge said once the scanner beeped and its displayflashed red. She held the screen up so Hunk, strong enough to sit up in bedpropped against a couple pillows, could see.

Lance stood near her, glancing over her shoulder, though hecouldn’t make heads or tails of the results. “I don’t see,” he told her.

Pidge shot him a glance, then pointed to a number in the topright corner. “That’s the lymphocyte count,” she explained. At Lance’s confusedeye roll, she sighed and added for his benefit, “Lymphocytes are white bloodcells.”

“When did you reprogram this for human biology?” Lancewondered, impressed.

“Coran, Shiro, and I have been working on it.” She grinnedand patted Hunk’s shoulder. “Hunk is our test subject now.”

“Great,” Hunk grumbled, a little softer than he wouldnormally.

“So what about hiswhite blood cell count?”

“It’s a little higher than usual,” Pidge said. She touchedthat corner of the display, and the screen changed, showing a more detailedanalysis. “Then there’s information on what antibodies are being released –quiznak this tech is amazing! And you don’t even have to do anything invasive – and a breakdown of specific white blood cell counts. Sobasically…Hunk probably has the flu.”

“There’s flu in space?”

“Uh, well, that’s the thing.” Pidge navigated back to whatlooked like a menu screen, and after a few more taps, she showed Lance and Hunkthe display again. “It’s a virus that Galra carry but are immune to. Humanimmunity, on the other hand…” She then shifted her eyes sheepishly towards Hunk.

“You have to quarantine me, don’t you?” Hunk asked, rightbefore breaking into a coughing fit.

“Well, it’s a little late for me, I think.” Pidge frownedand adjusted her glasses. “I’ve been in here for a while.” She glanced sidewaysat Lance. “Also I scanned you when you weren’t looking—”

“Hey!”

“—but you look fine. So you should probably get out nowbefore you catch it.”

“This isn’t like…the Galra equivalent of smallpox, is it?”Hunk wondered worriedly, hands clasped together.

“This won’t kill you, if that’s what you’re wondering,”Pidge reassured him, but after a beat of consideration, she averted her eyesaway from his face and added, “Probably.”

“Your bedside manner is not that great, Pidge,” Hunk said.

Pidge glared at him. “Anyway, my amateur opinion is thatHunk can’t go to that meeting with Allura.”

“Quiznak,” Lance said, gripping his chin with his hand.

“What?” Both Pidge and Hunk turned to regard him.

“This means she’ll end up taking Lotor,” he said, scowling and crossing his arms.

“No, she’ll probably take Shiro or you first,” Pidge said.She rolled her eyes at him and said, “Honestly Lance, I don’t trust him much yeteither, but your reasons are pretty selfish.”

“Excuse—”

“But you should really give Allura a little more credit whenit comes to choosing diplomacy partners, yeah?” With that, Pidge shot him onelast glare and left with a quick promise to send Coran to check on Hunk againlater.

After the door slid shut behind her, Hunk piped up, “How comeno one’s asked me how I feel aboutthis?”

Lance looked at him and frowned, a prickle of shame hittinghim. “Did you really want to kiss a bunch of strangers though?”

Hunk laughed, or tried to, for he fell into a nasty,wet-sounding coughing fit. Lance handed him a tissue and the glass of waterPidge brought him earlier, and after he drank and blew his nose, he said, “No, butif the alternative is being sick…”

“Hey, you can get sick from kissing people too,” Lancepointed out reasonably.

“With just a peck?” Hunk shrugged and said, “Anyway, Allurawould be doing most of the talking—”

“As usual.”

“—so anyone that isn’t Pidge or Keith can fill in for me.”

“Keith I get,” Lance said, “but why not Pidge?”

“Can you imagine Pidge diplomaticallyagreeing to kiss a few strangers?”

Lance pictured it…at least until his mental image of Pidgethrew a punch across a little green man’s jaw. He snickered and said, “No,guess not.”

“Also, Pidge’s usual common ground is tech, but from Allura’sbriefings, the Besayans don’t let science touch politics, so she would get verybored very fast.”

Lance nodded in understanding. “Makes sense,” he said. “GuessAllura will probably take Shiro then.” He smiled, satisfied with thatconclusion.

At least until that evening, when Allura approached himafter dinner and asked, “Lance, are you doing anything tomorrow?”

Lance grinned. “I have no plans,” he said.

“Good,” she said, and smiled. “I need you to take Hunk’splace at the diplomatic meeting tomorrow.”

Lance’s eyes widened, glee and dread combining to make his stomacha mess of nerves and anxiety. Allura touched his arm as she passed, and Pidgecame up to him. She grabbed his elbow and hung off him, doubling over, and fora moment Lance worried she was choking, at least until she heaved a breath and snickered.

“Oh my God, Lance,” she said, and she laughed even harder. “Youshould see the look on your face!”

“Thanks, Pidge,” Lance grumbled, scowling at her. “I’m so glad that the thought of me kissing abunch of strangers makes you this happy.”

Pidge sobered up then and said, “Yeah, that’s what’s funny about this.” Her eyes then darted past him.

Lance followed her gaze to see Lotor staring at him, athoughtful frown on his face, as if sizing him up. Lance then pointedly turnedhis back to him, smugness seizing him when he remembered that Allura still chosehim over a half-Altean prince…

…though he was substitutingfor Hunk.

Lance slumped, wondering what would be in store for him.

To Lance, kissing was a sacred act, something to be sharedwith someone special whether it wasthe first or not, rather than something that was a different culture’sequivalent of a handshake.

(Though apparently theirequivalent of a kiss was ahandshake, so perhaps that could be forgiven.)

It felt like cheating though, and Lance was still low enoughin his Kiss Count that he could count all of them on one hand – not that he’dever admit that aloud. Which was why he made an effort not to even come close to enjoying kissing strangers –humanoid aliens with glittery pale pink skin, three pairs of arms of varyingstrengths (one could tell which pair they favored from which pair had the mostbulk), and ears that weren’t pointed so much as jagged, though according to Allura, the jagged-ness was bodymodification, like ear piercings.

This doesn’t count, hethought the first time he had to pucker up.

(At least it wasn’t unpleasant…justreally, really uncomfortable.)

It wouldn’t count if Ihad to kiss my worst enemy either, Lance considered after the second.

Who was his worstenemy? It wasn’t Zarkon, because that just wasn’t personal enough; he’d nevereven seen him in the…flesh or whatever it was zombies had wrapping their bones.

It wasn’t Keith – enemydidn’t equal rival – and besides,he could stand to pick someone who wasn’t at least remotely decent-looking and that he could grudgingly admit to being friends with.

“Lotor,” he muttered under his breath. For the third Besayan,he pretended he was kissing Lotor, and it suitably disgusted him to the pointthat he almost recoiled.

Bingo, he thought.

None of the rest counted, none of the rest had any meaningattached to them. In fact, Lance couldn’t even remember the names of over halfthe diplomats Allura met with – and there were only six.

Mission(s) accomplished.

“So how’d it go?” Hunk asked when Lance went by his bedroomto see if he needed anything while he convalesced.

“Boring,” Lance complained. “Also they were all old.”

Hunk rolled his eyes. “That’s usually how it goes, Lance,”he said. “Allura and Prince Lotor are the weird young ones.” Then he frowned. “Actually,I’m not too sure about Lotor. He might be older than he looks…and alien biologyis weird.”

Lance raised an eyebrow at him. “Yeah, that’s the weirdthing about him.”

“And you were fine kissing random old aliens?” Hunk smirkedand started to wax poetic, “Oh, I remember when you had your first kiss and youwouldn’t shut up about it—”

“You can shut up about it now,” Lance said, glowering athim. “We don’t talk about that.”

“So then how was your second kiss?”

Lance said, “You have one more chance before I leave you towallow in your own snot.”

“That’s gross,” Hunk complained.

Lance gestured towards the wastebasket full of used tissuesat his bedside. “You would know!”

“Did you have to pucker up?”

Lance marched for the door, which slid open for him, andwith one foot out he looked over his shoulder at Hunk and said, “Two things:  I hope you feel better soon, and I also hopeyou realize that me leaving you alone now is all your fault.”

“Worth it,” Hunk said with a smirk.

Outside, Lance stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets andwhistled as he meandered down the hall. Maybe he would find Coran and ask to beput to work – ha! – or he would gobother Pidge or convince Keith to spar with him or—

He spotted Lotor walking in the opposite direction, towards him, and for a heartbeat Lanceconsidered dodging into an unoccupied room along this hallway. But Lotorspotted him first and approached.

“And how was the meeting today?” he wondered, crossing hisarms. For some reason, arms crossed didn’t look as closed off on Lotor as theydid on anyone else, though it might’ve been the disarming smile he wore.

Lance didn’t trust it for a tic.

“Great,” Lance said, “except for one small thing.”

“Hmm, I see?”

“I can’t keep kissing strangers and pretending that they’reyou.”

Lotor narrowed his eyes at him. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Lance glared at him. “I wanted to detachmyself from it so much that I pretended I was kissing someone I hated.” He crossedhis arms and smirked up at Lotor. “What do you think of that?”

“That it’s the strangest thing I’ve ever heard,” Lotor said.

Lance shrugged and said, “It’s all right if you don’tunderstand it. We can’t all be as savvy as me.”

“No, that we can’t.”

Lance squinted at him. “You’re making fun of me?”

“Absolutely not,” Lotor said, rolling his eyes. He thenstepped past Lance and proceeded in the direction he’d been heading withoutanother word.

Lance watched him go for a tic, shrugged, and went off insearch of someone else to bother, preferably someone he would not mind kissing.

[sp4c3-0ddity]

i actually wrote college AU fluff that’s gen, for once. i would like to thank everyone in the Pidgance Positivity Discord for enabling my chemist Hunk headcanons

and I would like to apologize to Hunk for having to deal with Lance in lab

Read it on Ao3

or read all ~2500 words below!!

Hunk regretted telling Lance his lab section number approximately three minutes into the first experiment.

“Hey, Hunk,” Lance said from his own hood, “can I borrow your scoop?”

Hunk, scanning his procedure for the third time since he wrote it, glanced towards him and asked, “What’s wrong with yours?”

Lance held up the metal scoop. “It’s got these white spots on it,” he said, pointing to one. “What if they contaminate my experiment?”

Hunk raised an eyebrow, surprised by Lance’s concern, but rather than pass over his own scoop, he took Lance’s and looked at it more closely. “Uh, Lance,” he said, “these spots are calcium carbonate.”

“Which is…?”

Hunk pinched his lips together and carefully asked, “How the heck did you pass general chemistry?”

Lance stared at him for a beat before snatching the scoop out of Hunk’s hand and walking over to the sink, mumbling something about all his friends being jerks. And Hunk took advantage of his temporary absence to start setting up his experiment.

“You doing okay, Hunk?” Shiro, the TA, asked when he came over.

“Yep,” Hunk said. Now he held the separatory funnel in his hand, prepared to shake it.

“And you, Lance?” Shiro prompted.

“Peachy,” said Lance.

Shiro crossed his arms as he eyed Lance. “Then why aren’t you wearing your safety goggles?”

Lance’s separatory funnel almost slid from his grip, but he recovered it before it could fall. “I’m fine though,” he said.

“Then make sure you stay that way by putting on your goggles.” Shiro patted Lance’s shoulder as he passed, approaching another pair of students in the middle of their experiments.

Lance looked at Hunk. “You…wouldn’t happen to have an extra pair of goggles I can borrow, do you?”

Hunk sighed as he vented gas from his funnel and set in place, turning the stopper and draining the bottom layer of fluid. “I thought I reminded you to bring your own pair.”

“Yeah, well…I forgot. And then I thought hey, at least I avoid those red lines I get after lab.”

Hunk rolled his eyes. “Lance, one day you’re gonna be that guy that people tell stories about.”

“Sounds good to me,” Lance said, already busy with draining his own separatory funnel.

They worked in blessed silence for a good few minutes, at least until Lance said, “Hey, Hunk, I think I threw the wrong layer away.”

It wasn’t that Lance was completely inept, exactly. It was that Lance was inept at certain things…like chemistry, and Hunk, for the life of him, could not figure out why the hell Lance chose a major so heavy with it.

“I like marine biology,” Lance said once when Pidge asked him, “and marine biology needs it.”

Pidge, for her part, did not like chemistry and did her best to avoid it, though luckily her interests did not align with it beyond a single semester of general chemistry that she currently procrastinated. “I’ll take it next year,” she said if anyone asked, and then mimed gagging whenever she caught sight of Hunk’s and Lance’s organic chemistry textbooks.

“Chemistry is just applied physics, Pidge,” Hunk told her.

“Well, keep it away,” Pidge retorted, holding her computer over her head as if chemistry was contagious.

Hunk glanced at her computer screen, curious about what she worked on. “Pidge, is that file’s name Mordor?”

“Yup,” she said, glaring at him.

“What is it?”

“It’s the worst coding assignment ever,” she explained.

“And it does…?”

“Well, one does not simply code for Mordor, that’s for sure.”

Hunk took that as a pointed sign that he was invading her privacy and didn’t press her for more details. Odds were it was a differential equation solver…or something like that.

Lance, for once, elected not to participate in their conversation, instead keeping his eyes on the chemistry textbook open in front of him. He pressed his hands to the back of his head, looking focused, at least until Hunk noticed that his eyes weren’t moving and had glazed over.

“What’re you stuck on, buddy?” Hunk asked.

“Huh?” Lance glanced up at him. “Oh, hybridization. Why is a carbon with a double bond sp2 hybridized again?”

Hunk set to explaining, but Lance interrupted him, “Wait, wait, wait. What’s this about pi bonds?”

He looked at Pidge, though he knew beseeching her for help was pointless, and sure enough she focused on her computer again, mumbling something about for loops and iterations.

“You know what?” Lance said after Hunk tried yet again to explain the finer points of hybridization. He stretched across the table until his arms were on either side of Pidge’s laptop, forehead pressed to his open book. “Why don’t we take a break and get some coffee?”

“It’s four o’clock,” said Hunk.

“You don't even like coffee," Lance said.

Hunk looked between his friends:  from Lance, unfocused and annoyed, to Pidge, frustrated and open to his idea. So, despite the knowledge that he and Lance had a midterm in two days, he agreed.

“See, Hunk, here’s the thing,” Lance said as they left the lecture hall, their exam behind them, out of sight and out of mind, at least until the professor graded it. “This isn’t the right kind of chemistry.”

“Oh, yeah?” said Hunk, raising an eyebrow at him. “What’s the right kind then?”

“Well, you know…” Lance waved a hand dismissively. “The kind you have with someone, like romantic chemistry. Like what you and Shay have.”

Hunk rolled his eyes and said, “For the last time, Shay is just a person I met and admire.”

“She gave you a rock,” Lance pointed out with a smirk.

“She’s a geology major,” Hunk said.

“It was a very pretty rock,” Lance said. “There were those crystals on it.”

“Quartz.”

“See?” Lance elbowed him in the side. “You even remember! And I know for a fact you keep it on your desk.”

“All right, fine,” Hunk said with an impish smile of his own. But before Lance could gloat about being correct, he added, “I admire the rock she gave me too.”

“You—” Lance lightly punched his arm, and they both laughed.

Lab got even worse after the midterm when Keith switched into their section.

“What happened that you had to switch this late in the semester?” Hunk wondered.

To his amazement, Keith flushed red and admitted, “I…went out with the TA.”

Lance’s jaw dropped, and Hunk stared at him incredulously. “Like…on a date?”

“Yes,” Keith said tersely, but from the way he very pointedly set up his experiment without even glancing towards Hunk or Lance, he refused to speak further on the matter.

“Now Keith and his old TA had chemistry,” Lance grumbled under his breath.

“We have chemistry now,” Hunk said when he noticed how far behind Lance was in his experiment. He’d only just finished setting up his reaction in the sand bath, but Hunk’s was nearly done, the color inside the flask already changing.

To be fair, today’s experiment was fairly short.

But within a few weeks, Hunk noticed a pattern emerging:  Keith finishing first, and Lance’s work turning sloppier while he tried to catch up.

“You know it’s not a race, right?” Hunk told him.

“I know but I’m still gonna win,” Lance retorted as he scooped his reaction’s product onto a piece of weigh paper while it was still damp.

“You’re gonna get over a hundred percent yield if you weigh it like that,” Hunk pointed out.

“Even better.”

“So you’re okay claiming to create matter?” Hunk asked.

“Shiro doesn’t care,” Lance said. He put the paper on the balance and, without waiting for it to stabilize, jotted a number down in his notebook. “He only cares that we have a number.”

“Okay, this is true,” Hunk conceded, “but you do know that scientific accuracy is kind of…important?”

“Oh, now you sound like Pidge.”

Hunk rolled his eyes and gave Lance up for a lost cause, but he had his revenge when he ‘forgot’ to reply to a text message asking him to correct his post-lab report.

Somehow, Lance survived the lab that semester with decent grades on all of his reports – though Pidge predicted that it was all thanks to Hunk.

“You’re not even in our class,” Lance grumbled.

“I don’t need to be there to know it’s true,” Pidge retorted.

“Well, Pidge, I guess I can’t see that movie you wanted to see on Friday after all,” Lance threatened, arms tightly crossed.

“That’s okay,” Pidge said, sounding unbothered. “I’ll take Matt with me instead since he’s visiting.”

Lance narrowed his eyes at her. “Then I’m changing my Netflix password.”

Pidge’s eyes snapped from her physics textbook to his face. “You take that back!”

“Only if you take back what you said about Hunk enabling my grades!”

“Why would I take back the truth?” Pidge demanded. “What are you, the Catholic Church?”

“Oh, comparing yourself to Galileo again? How high and mighty of you, Pidge!”

“You understood that reference?” Hunk wondered, interrupting their budding argument and surprised despite himself.

Lance gestured towards Pidge, who rolled her eyes before returning her attention to her studying. And he said, “She’s used it before. I’m just adapting to her.”

“Then why can’t you remember what the Grignard reaction is?” Hunk asked, pointing to the organic chemistry notes spread out over the table between them. “We’ve been over it so many times.”

“Grignard?” Lance narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “That’s the one with manganese, right?”

“Magnesium,” Hunk corrected, “but that’s closer than your last guess.”

Lance grinned. “Ha, I’ll ace the final then. Wait and see, Hunk.”

“There’s a really big difference between manganese and magnesium,” Pidge then pointed out. “I don’t have to have taken chemistry to know that.” But when both Hunk and Lance glared at her, she smiled sheepishly and added, “But good job, Lance.”

“Thanks, Pidge,” Lance said wryly. “I guess I won’t change my Netflix password after all.”

They had assigned seats during the final exam, so Hunk didn’t have to deal with Lance’s leg bouncing and vibrating the whole row of desks. But he did have to deal with the stress of seeing Lance finish before him, and wonder if he managed to answer every question on the exam or simply gave up.

Then again, it wasn’t like Lance to give up, even if he had no skill at something, which, well… They’d studied together every day for hours at a time for almost two weeks, and though Lance spent half that time distracted by one thing or another – usually a game on his phone or a conversation with Pidge – he still learned something.

Probably.

Hunk ignored the anxious churning in his stomach as he returned his focus to the exam. He thought he’d paced himself quite well so far, but between the time on the clock and the questions he had left to answer, he started to doubt himself. It didn’t help that someone in the row in front of him kept swearing under his breath.

Chair, and…a boat, Hunk thought as he drew cyclohexane in its two most stable molecular configurations. He was careful to count sides on each shape, to make sure that the hexagons had six corners and the pentagons had five.

He would not lose points on mistakes that wouldn’t have happened if he’d paid more careful attention to detail.

Name the following organic compounds. Easy, Hunk thought.

Propose a synthetic pathway between the reagent and the product. Oh, and this one had suggestions.

By the time Hunk reached the last question, he was grinning, feeling better about this particular exam than he had about anything in the last eighteen weeks of the semester…at least until Shiro called time.

Hunk glanced up at his lab TA before writing his best guess for a question he’d barely scanned, then, after passing the paper over to the TA that collected them, he mentally calculated what his score would be based on questions he knew he got correct.

Well, at least he would pass, right?

Hunk walked with Keith out of the lecture hall; he tried to ask him what he got for that last question, but Keith said, “I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Why?” Hunk wondered, eyebrow raised. “Did your girlfriend tell you what was on the exam?”

“No!” Keith said quickly. “I just don’t like talking about exams after the fact.” He crossed his arms, and after a beat added, “And the TAs don’t know what’s on the test until we do.”

“I knew that,” Hunk said. “Shiro refused to tell us anything.”

He and Keith parted after that, and Hunk met Lance at the cafe on campus, where Pidge waited for them at a table in the corner. “What time did you have to get here to get a table?” Hunk asked her.

Pidge didn’t look up from the old history exam she held in her hand when she replied, “Two minutes ago.”

“Seriously?”

“Right on the hour, when people go to class.”

“Nice,” Hunk said appreciatively, sitting down right as Lance joined them with three drinks:  hot chocolate for Hunk, who didn’t enjoy coffee, black coffee for Pidge, who didn’t like milk, and iced coffee for Lance, who didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘cold’.

“So how do you think you did?” Lance asked Hunk.

Hunk sipped his drink, considering. “Not too bad,�� he said. “I think I’ll get at least an eighty percent.”

“Not too bad?” Lance said. “I’d kill for that.”

“You’ll pass,” Pidge said after shooting a brief glance at him. “You’ve been studying your ass off.”

“Look who finally noticed all my hard work!”

“Your lab report grades might bring you down though,” Pidge continued as if she hadn’t heard Lance. She stared straight at him as she emptied three sugar packets into her coffee and drank deeply from it.

“I got decent grades on those,” Lance whined.

“Shiro’s an easy grader then,” Pidge said. “I saw your reports, and I may not know what half those molecules are called, but reports are supposed to be easy enough to follow. And yours were kind of—”

“Don’t say it, Pidge,” Hunk beseeched her.

“—sloppy.”

Hunk sighed, but to his surprise Lance admitted, “I guess I could’ve done better, but I would’ve done a lot worse without Hunk’s help.” When Hunk threw a glance at him, he added, “I was in good hands.”

“That’s true,” Pidge agreed.

Hunk smiled, glad Lance could confess to needing his help in regular conversation, but the smile disappeared when Lance said, “Oh, yeah, that reminds me:  which section are you taking next semester?”

Hunk wondered if it was too late for him to drop out.

[sp4c3-0ddity]

Shopping for Disaster

Category:  Gen Rating:  T Word count:  ~6000

Summary:

Allura just wanted something sparkly, and Pidge just wanted to get her ears pierced. And they will, after a mishap involving a kid, a Druid, and a Galra ship.

A/N:

yes, it’s another trip to the space mall with Pidge and Allura. admittedly i lost my steam a bit there at the end (writing is a learning experience) but i hope you like it!!

Read it on ao3

Or below the cut:

Allura lured Pidge into an impromptu visit to the space mall with the promise of a new video game, but so far she had yet to see that pan out. Instead Allura linked their arms together – quite literally bonding them – and towed her past every shop, peeking into windows for ‘something sparkly’.

“With what money?” Pidge grumbled when they paused outside an expensive-looking jewelry store…though she supposed resources scarce on Earth were not necessarily scarce on other planets.

“With this money.” Allura whipped out a wad of cash from her fanny pack – fashionable on Altea ten thousand years ago, apparently – and flashed them at Pidge. But after a tic she reconsidered, glancing furtively around at other shoppers lest they mug her right out in the open, and stuffed the cash back into its hiding place.

Pidge narrowed her eyes at the hidden money. “Do you really think Altean cash is still in circulation?” she said skeptically.

Allura frowned. “No, I suppose not,” she admitted, “but I’m sure there will be a money changer around here. Or a bank that will honor universal exchange rates…”

Pidge raised an eyebrow and didn’t point out that Altean currency would’ve stagnated and become valueless ten thousand years ago.

“All right, tell me this, Pidge,” Allura said with a sideways glance at her. “What is something you’ve always wanted but never had the chance to get?”

Pidge snorted. “Can’t you ask something a little easier on our first date, Princess?”

“First—oh, a joke!” Allura laughed pleasantly. She dragged Pidge past the fountain where she’d gone diving for coins with Lance last time and towards the food court where Hunk had so briefly become an indentured servant. “We’ve known each other for a while now,” Allura pointed out as they walked, “and we’ve fought alongside each other. Also, it needn’t be a loaded question; in fact, I can tell you right now I’m quite hungry and would love to try those.” She pointed to an item – Pidge suspected at random – pictured on the menu above Vrepit Sal’s.

“I’m not hungry,” Pidge told her.

Allura rolled her eyes. “Please humor me, Pidge,” she said. “I would like to treat you since you agreed to come.”

“You bribed me and have yet to deliver,” she pointed out. She unlinked their arms and crossed hers.

Allura considered her, frowning thoughtfully and tapping her chin. Her fingers wandered to her ears and tugged on her dangling pink earrings, and then she brightened, smiling before Pidge could become uncomfortable with the close scrutiny. “Do you like…jewelry? I’ve never seen you wear any.”

“It’s a little impractical for battle,” Pidge quipped. “And…I don’t have any out here, but I had some at home.” She remembered a few necklaces, some bracelets, mostly cheap painted plastic and nickel stuff from the stores that catered to preteen girls, along with a few pieces of gold that her mother stored in the safety deposit box at the bank. But other than that… “I’ve always wanted earrings.”

“Oh?” Allura clasped her hands together, beaming. “Your earrings aren’t pierced then?”

Pidge pinched an earlobe between her thumb and forefinger, tugging lightly. “No, my mother told me I could get them when I turned sixteen…which I probably am by now.” She frowned; it was still so strange to think she could’ve passed her sixteenth birthday and not even known it.

“Yes, that’s perfect, then!” Allura said. She grabbed Pidge’s elbow and turned them around, back towards the jewelry store they spotted earlier, but this time she went a little less reluctantly, even enthusiastically, a smile tugging on the corners of her mouth.

At least until a child with scaly green skin and a ridged boney structure ringing the top of their head skittered across their path, forcing them to a stop. “Keith!” they said when they caught sight of Allura. “Can I get an autograph?”

Allura froze, and Pidge watched the odd facial gymnastics of her expressions as she went from a reflexive scowl to something more pleasant but still…displeased. She bit her lip to keep from snickering as Allura cleared her throat and said, “I’m sorry, but my friend and I are in a hurry, so—”

“Aw, come on, Keith,” Pidge said, elbowing Allura in the side. “Channel your inner Lance and give the kid an autograph.”

“And who the quiznak would I even sign?” Allura hissed at her.

Pidge covered her mouth to hide her amused grin. “So…Keith will definitely sign something for you,” she told the kid. “Do you have a paper or something or?”

“Yes!” the reptilian kid said with a wide grin. “My mother has something, so I can show you?” They pointed behind them, towards the exit that led to the shuttle parking lot.

Allura exchanged a glance with Pidge, who shrugged and said, “It would be an interesting story to tell everyone when we get back to the Castle.”

Allura rolled her eyes but seemed to agree, for she let the kid take her by the hand and lead her away, Pidge following a few paces behind.

Outside the mall the night sky with few stars – light pollution – greeted them, nighttime traffic flying overhead and hovering nearby as late shoppers left and arrived. The kid led them past the automatic doors, across the hover vehicle parking lot and towards the shuttle parking further away.

“You came all that way without your mother?” Allura wondered, glancing over her shoulder at Pidge.

“She trusts me,” the kid said gleefully. They then waved at a shadowed figure standing out of the light.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Pidge said, right as a shock travelled up her spine, paralyzing her limbs and leaving her mouth gaping with a cutoff scream.

“Pidge!” Allura exclaimed, withdrawing her grip from the child’s, right as a helmeted figure struck her with a stunner.

Pidge collapsed, curling in on herself while her skin still tingled with static. The scent of burning hair made her nose twitch, and she groaned, trying to move limbs that wouldn’t obey her.

Distantly she saw Allura fall, and past her another tall helmeted figure passed the reptilian child a few GAC. “Thanks, kid,” they said.

The child turned and sprinted away without a second glance.

“W-what a-an asshole,” Pidge muttered.

She blacked out right as someone picked her up off the ground.

Allura awoke in the dark, the space quiet except for a distant humming…the humming of a huge spaceship’s engine, she quickly realized. She rolled onto her back and sat up, holding a hand to her aching head, though that wasn’t her only physical discomfort since she’d been asleep on the floor for longer than she could guess.

Allura felt along the floor, crawling until her hands collided with a wall. She stood slowly, wary that the ceiling could be low, but when her head didn’t brush it she relaxed and leaned against the wall, until she remembered what happened before she fell unconscious:

The Colotic boy holding her hand and leading her and Pidge into a trap.

“At least shapeshift into something less recognizable,” Coran had suggested when he’d been unable to dissuade her from this diversion.

“Why?” Allura had retorted without looking towards him, to busy searching her closet for something suitable to wear. “The Coalition is as strong as ever, and our enemies are far weaker now.”

“Still, I would feel better if—”

Allura pulled out a pair of white trousers that she hadn’t worn in a while, and then turned to smile at Coran. “You worry too much,” she’d told him. “I’ll be fine! And I won’t be alone.”

Except now she was, and she couldn’t even begin to guess where she could find Pidge and how to go about freeing her – along with herself.

Allura slid along the wall, her fingers questing for a crack or an imperfection that could indicate a door or even a vent. Finally, they touched on nearly undetectable gap in the corner between two walls, so thin even her fingernails wouldn’t fit into it.

With a growl, Allura sat on the floor, crossing her legs. Perhaps she could reach out and contact the Blue Lion with her mind, attract her to rescue them like the Red Lion went to Keith. She closed her eyes – though it was already plenty dark – and rested her hands on her ankles, regulating her breathing so she took steady breaths of the stale, recycled air circulating the ship.

In. She inhaled the way her combat teachers taught her, long ago, filling her lungs to bursting.

Out. She exhaled slowly through her nose, emptying her lungs as much as she could in a single huff.

Her thoughts calmed, occupied by the exercise. Blue? she thought, cautiously. She could feel all the Lions – the ship carrying her, and hopefully Pidge as well, couldn’t be too distant from the Castle yet – but even her bond to the Blue Lion seemed faint.

Something hissed, interrupting her effort to meditate, and Allura’s eyes shot open as violet light flooded the room, right as a long shadow fell across her.

Allura tilted her head back, eyes narrowing as she took in the tall Druid standing before her. She stood, slowly and composed despite the beating of her heart. Take control of the situation, she advised herself. You need to find out where they’re keeping Pidge.

So she demanded, “Where’s my friend?”

“The Green Paladin is being held elsewhere on the ship,” the Druid, to her surprise, responded immediately.

“And I trust you are being hospitable to her?” Allura said, tone heavy with sarcasm. “At least more hospitable to her than you are to me?”

The Druid stared at her, and because Allura couldn’t see their eyes, their gaze unnerved her, seemed to penetrate her in an unfamiliar, uncomfortably invasive way.

It felt like an interrogation, though they had yet to ask any questions.

“We have no reason to be inhospitable yet, Princess Allura,” said the Druid.

Allura bit her lip. Of course they knew who she was, especially if they’d already discovered Pidge’s identity. “And what can I do for you to keep it that way?” she wondered.

“Answer our questions as they come,” they said, “and we need not torture you or the other Paladin.”

She raised an eyebrow at them, resting her hands on her hips and feigning a calm she did not feel in her confinement. “The other Paladins will notice we’re missing,” she said. “Actually, I’m sure they already have.”

“Certainly,” agreed the Druid, “but while you and the Green one are here, they will be unable to form Voltron.”

“The Lions are quite—”

“I have no doubt the Lions are formidable individually,” the Druid interrupted, “but the High Priestess hypothesizes that the current generation of Paladins has yet to reach their full potential, which is why I am quite confident that a rescue will be difficult for them to mount while missing two Paladins.”

Allura dropped her hands, clenching them into fists as she frowned. Oh, so they knew about the switch too? But Lance—oh, but Keith was still with the Blade. Allura scowled, but she hadn’t really thought she could rely on rescue anyway. No, she and Pidge were on their own, prisoners aboard a Galra vessel housing a Druid.

“Fine,” she said, feigning a willingness to cooperate. “What is it you wish to know?”

The Druid said, “We will begin our interrogation with the Green Paladin. We suspect she will break quicker, and you are too valuable a prisoner to risk without cause. Be at peace, Princess Allura, for now.”

Allura reached into her trouser pocket right as the Druid turned their back, gratified that whoever must’ve searched her upon capture had dismissed her nail file as an unlikely weapon. Then, while the door to her cell slid shut behind the Druid, she wedged the tip into the shrinking gap and smirked when it held.

“This should be fun,” she said when no one outside the cell took notice after several doboshes, but the sentiment died as soon as the Druid’s final words hit her, and she realized she’d have to act quickly if she wanted to free Pidge.

Allura swept her sweaty hair up into a bun, tying it with a bit of string from her pocket. She brushed a few loose strands out of her face and tucked them behind her ear, then after another deep, composing breath, she gripped the nail file wedged between the door and the wall, pushed it a little further in, and tugged.

With a grunt, the gap in the doorway widened enough that Allura could grip the edge with her hands. She pulled with all her strength, and though the door resisted, she managed to produce a gap wide enough to fit her body through.

A narrow hallway lined with cells and illuminated with violet and red light greeted her, along with a Galra soldier that flinched into attention as soon as he caught sight of her. He raised his blaster to shoot, but Allura fell on him quickly, grabbing the barrel of the blaster and swinging it and him around until his back collided with the wall.

The soldier fell, dropping the blaster, but before he could get to his feet, Allura kicked his head, knocking his helmet clean off. It fell with a too loud clang, rolling almost halfway down the hall without stopping. He opened his mouth to shout for help, but then she slammed the butt of the rifle against his head.

Finally he slumped, lying prone and unconscious on the floor.

Heart pounding with exertion, Allura stripped him of his armor and equipment as quickly as she could before cramming his body into her cell. She then dressed in it, hooking the blaster at her belt alongside a communication device that buzzed with static, a voice emitting from it.

“Sergeant Hart, report!” they said. “What was that sound coming from the holding cells?”

Allura unhooked the com from the belt and brought it her lips. She cautiously pressed a button at random and, pitching her voice a little deeper, said, “All clear, sir! Just dropped my helmet!”

A beat, then:  “All right. Be more careful, Sergeant.”

Allura exhaled in relief and returned the com to her belt. She shifted, growing taller and wider, and when she peeked at her hands her skin was purple. Satisfied with her handiwork, she walked down the hall, only stopping to bend and pick up the dropped helmet, and proceeded away from the holding cells.

Unsure how to go about finding Pidge, Allura approached the first soldier she saw and smiled at him. “Hello! I’m new aboard this vessel, and I was wondering if you might direct me to the location of my next shift?”

The soldier frowned at her, the tip of a fang peeking out from between his lips. “Where is your next shift…Sergeant?” he asked, eyes drifting down to peek at a badge on her armor’s breastplate.

Allura imitated his frown and said, “I’m to guard the prisoner picked up from the swap moon.”

The soldier eyed her suspiciously while sweat beaded down Allura’s forehead. “You just came from that direction,” he told her.

“No, no, not that one.” She nodded her head back towards the hallway of holding cells. “The other one.”

“Oh, that one.” The soldier nodded in understanding and said, “She was taken to the interrogation chamber.” He grimaced. “She’s a Druid prisoner now and under their guard. Nasty buggers.” He patted Allura’s shoulder consolingly. “You’ll get used to working under them…eventually.”

“Yes, so…?” Allura prompted, hopeful that, despite the ominousness, his thawing towards her would help her find Pidge.

“Oh, are you sure that’s where your next shift it?” he asked. “Because no one except their personal assistants work directly with them, and you have to be rising in the ranks for—”

Growing impatient and not a little alarmed, Allura grabbed the soldier by the arm and pulled him close enough to her that she could look directly into his eye. “Just tell me where the interrogation chamber is,” she said. “If you don’t, I know a good place to stash your body.”

The soldier swallowed and told her, “Three levels down and forward. Follow the signs towards the lab.”

“Thank you.” Allura pushed him away from her and flashed him a grateful smile as she passed, all too aware of him grabbing his own communication device and muttering frantically into it. So she walked quickly, impatiently tapping her foot as the elevator descended three levels.

While she waited, she studied the emergency guide etched into the elevator wall, memorizing the route to the ship’s escape pods…which were at the rear of the ship. Allura frowned and patted the rifle at her hip, hoping she could find a weapon with which she was more comfortable while she and Pidge made their undoubtedly frantic escape.

When the elevator doors slid open, soldiers lined the hall beyond, lying in wait.

“Quiznak,” she muttered, unhooking the blaster from her belt and hefting it – with it point the right way. She stepped out of the elevator, and after dodging a whole volley of blasts wished for nothing more than her Paladin armor and the shield she could activate at her wrist.

Allura didn’t bother aiming as she shot at her assailants. She shot at random, in a way that would make Hunk proud while horrifying Lance, and alternated between firing and bludgeoning with the rifle, using the weapon in a way it was never meant to be used. Her powerful swings felled soldiers in only a few blows, and the narrow hallway worked to her advantage as she fought her way through while the armor – with or without shield – did its job and deflected most of the shots.

It was built to protect especially from friendly fire, after all.

Allura swung one soldier by the arm at a few others and mused about the poor quality of training within the Empire. They wouldn’t even hold a candle to the old Galra troops Zarkon led ten thousand years ago!

By the time she reached the end of the hall, encountering the first sign that read ‘LABORATORY’ in simplified Galra script, she’d left a trail of unconscious and groaning bodies in her wake, her lungs screaming for air while her heart tried to burst free of her chest. But she kept moving forward, towards Pidge and the Druid, despite knowing that she would meet even more resistance than this now that the ship was on high alert for the escaped prisoner.

Pidge hummed the last song she heard on the radio on Earth softly to herself while she waited to be tortured, though it wasn’t so much a coping mechanism as it was a way to keep herself busy – and to annoy the guard left in the room with her, and if there was anything she’d learned from Lance since meeting him, it was to never underestimate the power of irritation.

Unfortunately, the Galra soldiers that worked directly with the Druids seemed to be made of sterner stuff than the rank and file. This one hadn’t even glanced in Pidge’s direction since he’d strapped her to the table.

Pidge experimentally wiggled her hands and ankles, but of course the restraints held as tightly as they had last time she checked. Even the one across her chest barely gave her enough room to breathe.

She huffed, blowing a loose strand of hair out of her face in frustration. She wiggled her toes – they wanted her entirely barefoot – and tapped her fingers, growing antsy while she waited, accompanied by the guilt at her role in leading Allura into a trap.

“So…” she said aloud to the guard in the opposite corner. “What song would you like me to hum next? That one was ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’, by the way. Maybe I should sing the next one instead though?” She paused, giving him a chance to respond, but when he didn’t she continued, “I think I’ll sing ‘Space Oddity’ this time. It does kind of remind me of my dad, and if I start crying that’ll probably make your job easier, right?” Still no reaction.

Pidge rolled her eyes and started singing, “Ground control to Major Tom—”

The door slid open, interrupting her, and she struggled to pick her head up to see who it was, only for the shot of a blaster to ring out, hitting the guard in the corner and finally getting a peep out of him as he collapsed, groaning in pain.

“Lance?” she said, confused but hopeful. “There’s no way—”

“Pidge?” A Galra soldier hovered over her, and Pidge recoiled, until she recognized the voice as Allura’s. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, you know,” Pidge said, waving her fingers as Allura worked on unclipping the restraints keeping her body and limbs in place, “I’m just taking a nap.”

“Good,” Allura said, either completely missing Pidge’s sarcasm or accepting that it meant she was all right.

Which she was, now that Allura was there.

Pidge sat up as soon as the restraints recoiled, rubbing the faint bruising already on her wrists. “How’d you get free?” she asked Allura.

“I can explain that later,” she said, taking her arm and helping her down from the table. “Right now we have another problem.”

“You mean other than escaping the ship?”

“Yes,” Allura admitted. “Unfortunately, I was a bit sloppy with my own escape.”

Pidge frowned. “Oh, great,” she said. “Does this mean half the soldiers on the ship will be waiting for us just outside the lab?”

“Oh, almost definitely.”

Pidge slumped and wished for her bayard, and her armor, and her Lion, and all the special features that came with them. “And even if we managed to get to an escape pod, we’d still have to worry about a tail, unless…” She trailed off, an idea taking hold, and smirked at Allura. “I can’t get you something sparkly, but flashy I might be able to do.”

Allura regretfully discarded the Galra armor right before – after some persuasion from Pidge – shrinking smaller than her true size, small enough that she and Pidge were at eye level.

“How does it feel to be as short as I am?” Pidge wondered.

Allura glanced down at the vent in the wall, the grate blocking it already torn off and set aside. “I can’t say I’m fond of it,” she admitted.

“Yeah, well, you get used to it.” Pidge held the communication device belonging to Sergeant Hart in one hand, toggling through the settings for…something. But when a crystal at the top projected a map – the layout of the ship – she grinned triumphantly.

(Allura stifled a groan; she might’ve been able to find Pidge so much more easily if she’d known that was there.)

“All right, here is the engine,” Pidge said, zooming in at a point close to the back of the ship. “This puts us pretty close to the escape pods, at least, so that’s one less thing we have to worry about. But”—she pointed to a set of rooms opposite the escape pods, on the other side of the engines—“these are the barracks, so reinforcements will come from there.”

“And how do we overload the engines and give ourselves enough time to escape?”

Pidge frowned. “I think…we’ll have to go to the bridge for that.” Now the projection displayed a room in the top-center of the ship. “We’ll have to split up; I’ll go to the bridge and, from there, kill the security systems on the way to the engines. You’ll head to the engines – you’ll have to fight off anyone in your path, but I’ll do my best to slow them down from the bridge – and there should be a control room there, where you can directly and more efficiently destroy the internal workings.” She smiled. “It should be a lot like the Castle’s, especially according to these design specs.” She pulled those up on the display, but before Allura could attempt to interpret them, Pidge waved them away and pocketed the communication device. “Then we meet at the escape pods. The ship won’t blow, exactly, but it’ll be so badly damaged that they can only send fighters after us…unless I seal the hangar doors from the bridge.” Pidge shrugged, looking far too pleased with herself about this.

Allura raised her eyebrow. “And how will I get to the engines without you to lead me?”

Pidge confiscated another communication device from a nearby soldier they’d already disarmed and, after changing a few settings, handed it to Allura. “The active channel on there is also active on mine.” She patted her pocket. “I’ll direct you where to go once we split up.”

Allura met Pidge’s eyes, and her confidence in their hastily thought up plan gave her confidence as well, so she nodded. “Then we’ll do it your way,” she said.

“All right, let’s go.” Pidge waved her towards the grate, but she entered first, crawling on hands and knees until her feet – still bare – disappeared inside.

Allura followed after taking a bracing breath – she’d never much cared for small confined spaces, and since spending ten thousand years inside a cryopod that discomfort hadn’t been soothed. She was wary of every sound they made – their elbows knocking against the walls of the vents, their breathing echoing, any peep that might escape their lips – but no grate opened, no one challenged them inside. In fact, Pidge seemed almost comfortable, like she was the queen of this windy maze of a castle.

“Oh, we’re here,” Pidge whispered after stopping suddenly, when Allura almost tripped over her feet. She felt along the floor, then moved forward a little. “I need you to open it up.”

“Right.” Allura crawled a little more until her fingers slipped through the gaps in a grate. She gripped tightly, wiggling to check what leeway she had, before pushing against it as hard as she could.

Fractures spread in the already corroded metal, and Allura added a foot for leverage. The grate then broke off, slipping from her grip and falling to the floor of the bridge below.

Allura and Pidge peered down at a small group of soldiers a short distance below, all of whom glanced up when a mostly intact metal grate fell. Allura smiled and Pidge waved, right before telling Allura to keep going straight and that they would be in contact.

She slid from the hole and fell onto a soldier, a blaster confiscated from another one in her hands as she fired at them.

Allura watched and angled her own blaster down, taking out the soldiers that tried to sneak up on Pidge from behind; and she wasn’t sure if it was her imagination, but she thought her aim actually improved!

Within doboshes the room was vacated of conscious Galra soldiers, and Pidge already set to work locking the bridge’s doors. She then looked up at Allura and said, “I’ve got this! Keep going to the engine.”

“All right,” Allura said. She returned her blaster to her belt and turned carefully inside the narrow vent, facing her destination.

The systems aboard this Galra vessel functioned just the same as aboard any other despite the Druid in command, which meant that Pidge could infiltrate it with uncanny ease, and without even her prepared translation program within reach.

“Thank you standardized systems,” Pidge muttered, smirking as she found the security protocols between the bridge and the engine rooms.

First she shut down most of the alarms – the ones that she could access indirectly – and unlocked all the doors in Allura’s path. After dragging an unconscious Galra soldier for the use of his handprint, Pidge locked the fighter hangar doors. Then, the pièce de résistance:

Pidge found the microphone to the ship-wide intercom system and turned it on. “Attention, soldiers! There are two intruders aboard and they have infiltrated the bridge! Everyone not on duty, report to the bridge immediately and take them out with extreme prejudice! Vrepit Sa.” She clicked it off, and though she doubted that what she said was consistent to protocol, she was sure she’d achieved her objective and that every soldier aboard the ship would stay out of her and Allura’s path to escape.

Hopefully.

Pidge pulled the communication device from her belt right as Allura contacted her.

“Pidge, what were you thinking?” she demanded. “They’re coming right for you!”

“Yeah, which means their eyes aren’t on you,” Pidge pointed out. Without waiting for Allura’s impending lecture, she found an alternative route away from the bridge, one that would have less resistant traffic, and took it, barely escaping the attention of the first of the soldiers that she’d lured to the bridge. She ducked out of the way of the doorway, hiding in a shadow just beyond an alcove and out of sight of any other soldiers passing by.

“Pretty soon,” she told Allura, keeping her voice low, “they’re going to be too busy looking for us in the wrong place, and then from there they’ll be too busy trying to get in or out.”

“What do you—”

Pidge pressed a button – repurposed while she was in the bridge – on her linked communication device and watched as the doors to the bridge slid shut. “I hacked their security system,” she said. “I control it from my com.”

She lingered only long enough to make sure that the soldiers still filing down the hall were preoccupied with attempting to help their comrades inside escape – and those confined would be frantically trying to get beyond Pidge’s own security measures.

“I’m on my way to the pods now,” Pidge said to Allura. “I’ll see you there.”

“Yes, I suppose you will,” Allura agreed. When Pidge didn’t respond immediately, she clipped the communication device back onto her belt and continued forward.

Per Pidge’s promise and efforts, the path ahead was mostly clear of soldiers, enough that she’d grown to her preferred size as soon as she’d emerged from the vents. She was still forced to duck around corners to avoid sentries and drones, but thanks to the blaster in her hands and the blade she now had at her belt, she was far from defenseless.

Allura followed the path laid out by the map projected from the com to the engines. Shadows filled the voluminous chamber, the corners and edges so dark they were out of sight, and the cavern was crisscrossed with catwalks leading to different parts of the hardware for the engineers to access.

After consulting the engines’ design specs, Allura selected a catwalk leading to the largest engine, the only one almost constantly operating, though rarely at full power. If she irreparably damaged that one, she and Pidge would have nothing to fear once they escaped; the ship would destroy itself once it gave pursuit, the engine overloading as it tried to achieve full power.

Allura blasted a continuous stream of laser fire at a crucial part, interfering with the engine’s function. Then, satisfied that the damage was substantial and enough, she turned and headed the way she came, running in her hurry to leave the engines behind and making her way to the escape pods.

A hall away, lightning struck Allura, traveling up her spine and making her hair stand on end. When the shock faded, she fell to the ground on hands and knees, hissing at the pain dancing through her nerves. Not again, she thought, eyes wide as she frantically scanned the hallway, searching for her assailant.

Left, she thought. The electricity traveled from her left hand first, so—

Allura raised her blaster and fired it towards her left; the shadows there coalesced, momentarily revealing the lurker who vanished as the shot pierced them.

“I hate Druids,” Allura grumbled, straightening and holding the rifle firmly in both hands, dreading the next blow.

Allura was late. The path was clear, the escape pod ready for their escape, but Allura was late.

Pidge put the communication device up to her mouth again and said, “Allura?”

This time, she answered immediately. “I’m kind of in the middle of something, Pidge,” she said, breathless and sounding pained.

“Where are you?” Pidge demanded. “And who—” Where did I screw up…again?

“Not far from – quiznak – the escape pods.” A shot from a blaster sounded. “It’s a quiznaking Druid.”

“I’m on my way.” Pidge clipped the com back onto her belt and sprinted in the direction Allura indicated, towards the engines. She came across her standing stiffly, eyes flitting rapidly from side to side, a blaster in one hand and a sword in the other.

Pidge gripped her own blaster tightly in both hands, warily scanning the hall for the Druid. “Where’d it go?” she asked Allura.

“Quiznak knows,” Allura said.

The Druid appeared just behind Allura, raising their hands in preparation for an attack, but then it spotted Pidge and vanished.

“Back to back,” Allura said once Pidge pointed them – or their absence – out. She turned, putting her back to Pidge’s, and they turned in a slow circle.

“Why don’t we just sprint for the pod?” Pidge suggested, tone quiet.

“And leave that thing alive?” Allura said, scandalized.

“Okay, point taken.” Pidge narrowed her eyes, searching, searching… At a rustle in a corner, she raised her blaster and fired a shot, but it was only her own shadow shifting as she and Allura pivoted in place.

The Druid then reappeared in front of Pidge, but this time, before she could fire at them, they said, “Why do you think we would leave you alive?”

“Come on!” Pidge said. “Make your move and stop putting it off!”

Her goading worked, and the Druid raised their hands and attacked, but this time something was different about their attack, light arcing violet rather than white.

At a light pressure from Allura’s elbow pressing into her arm, Pidge spun so that Allura faced the Druid instead, absorbing the attack – the quintessence – and firing it back at them with a frustrated cry.

The quintessence struck hard and fast, faster than the Druid could vanish, right in the center of their hood. They gave an unholy screech, limbs thrashing, and doubled over.

Pidge shook her head, disrupting her horrified fascination, and grabbed Allura’s wrist and towed her to the ready escape pods. She followed stiffly and mutely, her weapons slipping from her grip, climbing into the pod after Pidge without protesting.

Pidge took the pilot’s seat right as the pod ejected from the docking bay. She steered them away at full speed and asked Allura, “Can you keep an eye out for pursuit? I know I covered our bases, but…” She shot a worried glance at her, in time to see her inhale bracingly.

“I’m fine,” Allura reassured her. “At least we know those…Druids can be…killed.” She stared at her hands, shook her head, and switched half the viewscreen to scan the pod’s rear.

Pidge navigated away from the ship, back towards the moon with the space mall. Her heartbeat slowed as they pulled further and further away from the Galra ship, and she relaxed.

“It’s crumbling,” Allura told her. “It won’t be able to chase us.”

“Good,” Pidge said with a smirk. She turned her head and met Allura’s eyes.

Allura smiled back, and laughed. “Now what?”

“Now we return to the mall,” Pidge said, grinning. “You promised I could get my ears pierced, right?”

“Right,” said Allura, “but on one condition.”

Pidge raised an eyebrow at her, taken aback by her serious tone. “What?”

Allura narrowed her eyes at her and said, “Not one word to Coran.”

Ticketing illegally parked shuttles and pods was Varkon’s least favorite part of his job. There was nothing fun or exciting or evil-vanquishing about leaving little slips of paper taped to the front of a vehicle.

But illegal parking inconvenienced the good shoppers that made the effort to park legally, so the least Varkon could do was inconvenience the rulebreakers.

Still, he never expected the imperial pod landed on the curb just outside the mall’s exit, anymore than he expected the note scrawled in childish Galra script:  an apology, and a request for the craft to be scrapped for parts, along with a signature.

Pidge and Allura, Paladins of Voltron.

Varkon glanced around furtively before pocketing the note. He couldn’t remember a Paladin from The Voltron Show named Allura, but he appreciated these delinquents’ gesture.

He still wrote the ticket.

[sp4c3-0ddity]

Ink on a Page

an Inkheart AU (sort of)

Category:  Gen Word count:  ~1600 Chapters:  1/?

Summary:

Pidge has lived a normal - if unstable - life with her mother for the last fourteen of her sixteen years, but even the fantastical books she reads never could've prepared her for the wild twist it takes when an 'old friend' of her mother's appears unannounced at their door.

Read it on ao3

Or below the cut:

Chapter One

At a brisk knock on the front door, Pidge took off her headphones and turned her face towards the sound, wondering who would be visiting so late on a weeknight. Unsure if her mother was even still awake, she crept out of her bedroom, down the hall, and to the door, right as someone on the other side knocked again.

“I’m coming,” she grumbled. She stood on her toes to peer through the peephole, and when she ascertained that their late-night visitor didn’t look particularly threatening, she unlocked and opened the door.

The woman standing on the landing was tall – taller than the average man, Pidge thought – with unblemished dark skin and silvery hair that shone in the dark, reflecting the streetlights like the moon reflected the sun. Her eyes gleamed blue when they drifted down and landed on Pidge, and she smiled.

“Hello,” she said in a lyrical accent. “Is Colleen here?”

Pidge blinked, stunned. There was something…ethereal about this woman, something she couldn’t put her finger on. “I…yeah,” she said. “I’ll go…get her.” Without a second thought, she slammed the door shut and locked it, ignoring the woman’s cry of alarm.

“Mom!” she called.

“What?” said Colleen, poking her head into the entryway. She looked at Pidge, wide-eyed and questioning. “Who was at the door?”

“Some lady asking for you,” Pidge said. “I panicked and shut the door in her face.”

“This late?” Colleen sighed and approached, waving her aside so she could check the peephole. Pidge clasped her hands and waited, watching her mother frown, lines of concern deepening on her forehead and at the corners of her eyes.

“Do you know her?” Pidge asked.

“Yes,” Colleen said. She didn’t elaborate, though Pidge imagined she must surely sense her curiosity, but she opened the door and stiffly greeted the woman, “Allura?”

Pidge peeked around her mother to see the woman’s – Allura’s – face smooth, irritation vanishing and immediately replaced with a pleasant smile. “Colleen,” she said. “It’s been a long time.”

“It has,” Colleen agreed.

Pidge looked back and forth between the two women, uncertain what to make of it – her mother’s aloofness and the stranger’s politeness. Perhaps Allura was an old business colleague or contact, since she appeared too young – maybe a few years older than Pidge herself – to be a former classmate.

(Most people, apparently, kept in touch with old classmates, something Pidge struggled to do despite having so much ‘experience’ meeting new ones.)

“May I come in?” Allura wondered, her smile looking uncomfortably frozen in place.

Colleen glanced over her shoulder, then at Pidge, as if only then realizing she was still there. But then she said, “Yes, I guess you can.” She stepped aside, making room for Allura to enter before shutting the door behind her. As she inspected their surroundings – everything from the small television set to the atomic clock on the wall – Colleen asked, “Would you like anything to drink?”

“No, thank you,” said Allura, turning her head towards Colleen. “I hope this won’t take long.”

Colleen’s face said that she hoped the same louder than any words ever could, and as the two adult women sat at the small kitchen table, Pidge hovered, curious. But before Allura broached whatever topic she had on her mind – whatever shared history she and her mother had – Colleen looked at her and said, “Pidge, please go to your room.”

Her eyes widened, disappointment making her heart heavy. “But—”

“Katie,” Colleen said, stern. She almost never used Pidge’s given name, only saying it when it was especially serious, and hearing it now, for the first time since she started high school, shocked Pidge into obedience.

She retreated to her bedroom, back stiff, but rather than closing the door, she left it cracked. She retrieved the empty water glass from her bedside table and rested it against the door, then she pressed her ear to the bottom.

“…find me?” Colleen was saying.

“Does it matter?” Allura said. “I understand that you don’t wish to be found by the likes of me, Colleen, but I promise that I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important.”

Pidge narrowed her eyes. ‘Likes of me’? There was no hint of bitterness in her voice, as if Allura only stated a fact.

“That’s what you said last time,” Colleen said testily, “and after that you promised I would never have to see you again.”

There was a last time? Pidge set the glass on the carpet and hurriedly rushed to her desk, grabbing a pen and notebook and turning it to a blank page. She settled back on the floor and leaned against the door with the glass in her right hand, notebook balanced on her lap with pen poised to write.

“…lied,” Allura said, sounding regretful. “But circumstances have changed, and I have reason to believe Zarkon has plans.”

Pidge scribbled the unfamiliar name down, spelling it the way it sounded.

“Zarkon always has plans,” Colleen said dismissively, and Pidge imagined her waving a hand. “And he’s welcome to them, so long as he leaves me and my family out of it.”

“You see, I think that is the problem, Colleen. My contact inside claims he’s searching for someone with a silver tongue.”

A ‘silver tongue’, Pidge wrote. A smooth talker? A diplomat? A businessman?

“Well, it won’t be me,” her mother said.

Pidge’s hand froze. Colleen Holt? A silver-tongued smooth talker? She smirked at the thought; though her mother was quite the accomplished journalist, she spoke clinically and to the point, without any honeyed words. She was good at appealing to reason, and awful at manipulating emotions.

At least, that was how Pidge thought someone with a ‘silver tongue’ would be like.

“It’s possible it won’t be,” Allura seemed to agree, “but just in case, I would like to take you and your daughter under my protection.”

“And what use is your protection?” Colleen demanded. “It didn’t save my husband and son!”

What?

“That was—those circumstances were different!” Allura retorted, immediately defensive.

“Well, I see no difference!” her mother said, the screeching of a chair’s legs against tile signaling that she stood. “It’s thanks to you and your Voltron that they’re gone!”

Voltron? Pidge thought she recognized that as the title of a dusty old science fiction novel sitting on the bookshelf in her mother’s bedroom.

“Oh, if you want to point fingers, then I am not to blame!” Allura held her ground. “I’m not the one with the silver tongue, Colleen! I’m not the one that unleashed Zarkon on your world!”

“I’m not the one who had the responsibility to stop him in theirs, Princess!”

Pidge put her pen down and closed the notebook, momentarily overwhelmed with all this information. What the hell were they even talking about?

“All right,” Allura said, voice lower, so quiet that Pidge strained to hear her. “Perhaps we both are to blame.”

“Maybe,” Colleen agreed grudgingly, “but that doesn’t change the fact that I have a different responsibility.”

“Then we are at an impasse?”

“Yes,” Colleen said.

“And I can’t convince you?” said Allura. She sounded regretful, even a little sad. “I won’t force you, Colleen, but I do wish—”

“No.”

“Colleen—”

“No,” Pidge’s mother said. “While we speak of responsibility, protecting my daughter is mine, not yours. So thank you, Allura, but I decline.”

Pidge held her breath during a pregnant pause ready to give birth at any moment, mind carefully blank as if the noise of her thoughts would muffle the voices coming from the kitchen.

Finally, Allura said, “Very well. I am…sorry you feel that way.” Her chair’s legs scraped against the kitchen floor, heavy footsteps echoing down the hallway and towards Pidge’s room as she walked to the front door.

Colleen followed her, and their voices became too distant for Pidge to hear, so she dropped the glass – it landed softly on carpet without breaking – and leaned her head against the door, stunned. Her mind reeled with what she heard, and even as she stared at her sparse, confused notes, she couldn’t make any sense of it.

Who was Zarkon? And what did her mother have to do with him?

The front door slammed shut, and a few beats later, Pidge heard her mother’s footsteps approaching. She quickly tossed her notebook underneath her bed and moved to sit in her desk chair, settling her headphones back over her ears right in time for Colleen to open the door without knocking.

“You were eavesdropping, weren’t you?” Colleen asked without a hint of judgment in her tone.

Pidge slowly and deliberately took off her headphones and turned to face her mother. “Who’s Zarkon?” she said, deciding there was no shame in confessing her crime after all.

Colleen’s face – already gloomy – darkened. “It doesn’t matter,” she said.

“Yes, it does,” Pidge insisted. “You sounded”—and it hit her, why the conversation between her mother and Allura unnerved her so, besides a simple deficit of information—“scared.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” said Colleen.

“But—”

“Pidge,” Colleen said. When Pidge only stared at her, wide-eyed, she smiled and continued, “Allura is just an old friend, but we parted badly last time we met. Love, you have nothing to worry about.”

Pidge glanced towards her bed, towards the notebook that she feared implied otherwise, but then her eyes drifted to her mother, whose reassuring smile begged her to believe it. So despite the questions – despite the mention of characters she didn’t know, including her father and brother – Pidge said, “Okay.”

It’ll be okay, Colleen always said every time they moved and she had to change schools again.

It’ll be okay, Pidge thought as her mother came in and kissed her cheek before bidding her goodnight.