Cookie Bombs

-Chapter 10-

(Lance's pov)

The sound of heavy breathing woke me up. I groaned and pushed myself into a sitting position, rubbing my eyes to get rid of the sleepiness. As I looked to my right, I was met with an... interesting sight.

Keith was doing pushups in the middle of the room, breathing heavily everytime he lowered himself and pushed up again. His arm muscles were flexing while beads of sweat were rolling down his chin into his sleeveless shirt which was only loosely covering his upper body. He was scrunching his brows together, struggling to push himself up one last time.

He groaned but managed to perform the last pushup and as soon as he did, all the tension left his body and he slumped down, catching his breath. He wiped his forehead with a towel and in that moment, noticed that I was awake. He crooked his head and asked, sounding slightly annoyed, "What are you looking at?"

Taken aback by his rude behavior, I raised my arms in a defending manner and answered in an annoyed tone as well "Nothing, you just woke me up with your grunting."

He spat back "Well sorry, that I disturbed your precious sleep. I would have woken you up either way, because we're almost at the beginning of the trail." That sentence finally woke me up completely and I sprang up. "Show me the map, I wanna see for myself."

Keith and I both observed the map and I traced the route we still had to travel. "Two, maybe three hours, I'm guessing. Let's get ready and put our armor on, just in case." He agreed and I took my armor and clothes into the bathroom to change, no way I'm doing that in front of him.

(Keith's pov)

As Lance left the room to change, I quickly undressed and put on my clothes and armor. It would be so awkward if he walked in while I was only half dressed. But I didn't have to hurry, cause Lance apparently needed a long time to put on some simple clothes. I used the time to polish my sword and check the map again and again. Suddenly, the bathroom door slid open and Lance finally appeared, completely dressed in his blue armor.

We headed over to the cockpit and I slumped into my seat, turning off automatic mode and taking over control again. I pressed some buttons and we picked up speed, gliding faster through empty space. Meanwhile, Lance took the communication device Shiro had given us and recorded a message to tell them that we had almost reached the destination from the map and would notify them when we had found it.

After flying for another hour, Lance suddenly pointed ahead excitedly. "You see that, Keith? Doesn't that look like it's glowing?" Pretty far ahead, I could also spot a little collection of weakly glowing lights.

We rushed towards it, but the closer we got, the bigger they revealed themselves to be. From afar, it had looked like the glowing carried on over a range of maybe ten meters, but now we noticed that it was much bigger than that.

Soon, we were so close that some of the yellowish glowing organisms would almost touch the lion. I stopped and we observed what lays in front of us.

The lights seemed to form a snake-like trail that had a diameter of sometimes one meter, sometimes twenty. They were slowly swaying up and down, always slightly in motion. Lance then got up to get out of the lion and observe them closely, but I grabbed his wrist and held him back.

"Wait, maybe they're dangerous or poisonous in some way. Let's first check them with the lion." I turned on some kind of ultrasonic mode to scan the organisms that would show if they would be harmful towards us.

"Seems safe, let's check them out. But don't touch them, we still don't know what they are." We both headed over to the lions overhead hatch and climbed out. Turning on our boosters, we flew over to one of the organisms.

It had the shape of a water droplet, and also looked like it was some kind of liquid substance. It was glowing in a warm yellowish light and was surrounded by smaller bubbles. Even though it didn't have any specific features and looked just like a water drop, we both could feel that it was alive in some sense.

Lance reached closer towards the organisms, but without actually touching it. "It's almost as big as my hand and it's kinda warm."

"Hey! Don't do that, what if it burns your hand?!" I grabbed his wrist and dragged his arm away quickly, still very cautious of that thing.

The way that thing is ... pulsating, it feels so alive even though the scanners didn't pick up any signs of life. Creepy.

I slowly reached out my hand and held it closer towards the organism to check for myself. I could feel some kind of heat waves radiating from it, even through our suits.

Suddenly, Lance pulled his hand from my grasp, which I was unconsciously still holding tight. He reached towards the thing and tapped it's surface lightly, making it waver and sway through space. It also began glowing a bit stronger, but the weirdest thing was that it left an yellow glowing imprint on Lance's suit where he had touched it.

He chuckled and nudged it again, making it sway and emanating more light. "Look! It's not dangerous at all." He carefully closed his hands around it and jiggled it back and forth. With every movement and more and more of the yellow color sticking to his suit, an almost childlike grin spread over his face.

I also reluctantly took one of the organisms and threw it from one hand into the other. It was warm whenever it touched my suit, but not painfully hot and my hands began glowing slightly yellow wherever the ball came into contact with them.

I heard the quiet thrusting of boosters and as I looked up, I saw Lance flying directly into the crowd of bubbles while he was stretching out his hands to touch and nudge them. I could hear him laugh over the intercom as he played with the organisms, punching them here and there, grouping them together and them throwing them as far as the non-existent gravity allows him to.

What is this feeling I get everytime I look at you?

"Lance! Come on let's head back into the lion and tell Shiro and the others about what we found." He agreed and, after I placed three of the organisms carefully in a glass container as samples, we headed back to the red lion.

Ever since Lance had touched the organisms and got all the color smeared over him, he had been laughing quietly and was acting pretty weird, but I had just ignored it. Now I couldn't anymore.

We were just sitting in the main room and I was scanning the samples and sending the data codes to Pidge, while Lance was sitting on his futon, bored as hell. He was sometimes giggling and fidgeting around, which didn't bother me very much as this seemed to be his normal behavior, but after he began wriggling his feet and poking his thighs over and over again while humming loudly,

I noticed that something was wrong.

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Oooh, what happened to Lance? The yellow organisms seem to somehow I fluence him. Find out in the next chapter and have a super awesome day/night :)
-MrTangerin