"Let's go!" Shiro said hurriedly as he lead the team forwards. Red purred and Keith could feel it resonate in his mind. They broke the planet's atmosphere and flew full speed at the only Galra tower on the planet.
It was odd. From what Keith had read it seemed like towers would be unconventional on such a planet. Even now Keith was having to fight against the raging wind and low visibility of a heavy sandstorm. The tower would have no tactical advantage and was probably constantly at risk of toppling over. If this was such a low priority planet why waste resources on a tower in need of endless repairs and monitoring?
Maybe the conditions of the planet weren't always like this. His voice of reason called out.
He gripped Red's controls tighter.
"Is anyone else getting a bad vibe?" Lance's voice filled his cockpit as his face appeared on the screen washed in blue light.
"Yeah, something doesn't feel right." Pidge's face showed up beside Lance's.
"I think there is more to this planet then we originally thought." Keith guided his lion around a particularly clouded spot as he voiced his thoughts.
"Hold steady." Shiro said, continuing forwards. They had almost reached the tower. When they were about 200 meters out Galra flyers began to flood out of one of the openings on the tower. "Evasive maneuvers, help each other take these guys down!" Shiro shouted, dropping black out of the lead to steer away some of the attention from the others.
It didn't take too long to get rid of most of them. There was one close call where Hunk almost creamed Lance in his hurry to get away from the eight flyers pursuing them, but Shiro intervened just in time.
Now they were watching as the three flyers turned tail and flew off towards the desert.
Something was definitely wrong.
"They're retreating?!" Pidge's shouted shrilly in disbelief and Keith couldn't help but to agree.
The Galra motto was 'victory or death' after all.
In an instant there was a flash of blue and Lance was in pursuit.
"Wait, Lance!" Shiro yelled.
"We can't let them get away, the only reason they would retreat is if they had something better to protect!" He yelled back. Keith was after him before he had even finished his sentence, ready to back him up. The others were much slower to start after them and none of them where as fast as the red lion.
Keith was by Lance's side before the others were even halfway there.
"Lance, Keith, we've lost visual!" Shiro shouted. His voice was worried and wavering, but that could have just been a side affect of how the communicators were subtly glitching. The sandstorm was getting more powerful and was hard to even see Lance, let alone the Galra flyers they had been pursuing.
"I can't see them anymore." Lance groaned. "Keith, we should pull back and wait for the others." Lance began to slow his lion down but Keith began to fly ahead.
"No, I think I see them! We're close!" Keith pushed on, though he really had no clue if he was seeing a faintly glowing Galra flyer or if his eyes were just playing tricks on him. He felt it though, they had to be close. His stomach was churning and the feeling that something was entirely wrong had settled there. He wanted to find the root of the problem before it found them.
"Keith what are you doing, you can't see anything!" Lance pushed his lion back to full throttle to keep up with Keith, the blue being marred by the dark orange and black sand whipping through the air. "Keith, pull back!" Lance yelled at him, the irritation evident in his voice.
Keith battled away the voice of reason that was Lance and continued to search the sky for a hint of the Galra flyers.
"Guys- skrrtch- back- skrrrrrrtch" Pidge's voice cut out completely and the line to all paladins except Lance blinked red.
"There!" Keith shouted even though Lance would have been able to hear him at a normal volume. Close to the ground, entirely easy to miss, was a Galra flyer. He switched course and Lance followed close behind.
Landing was difficult with the powerful winds buffeting his lion, but it was even more challenging due to the fact that it was changing the sandy ground beneath him rapidly. This made it hard to gauge what was stable and what wasn't. Lance's cockpit appeared on Keith's screen, containing a very worried and disappointed Lance.
"Keith, it's not worth it anymore. Let's go."
"But it's right there!" Keith gestured to the flyer desperately. They were so close to getting answers, they couldn't leave now when the only challenge ahead of them was landing their lions.
Keith touched down in the sand. Lance's frustrated scream rang out but he ignored it, focusing entirely on landing safely. It was rough but after a moment Red settled and Keith was finally close enough to get a clear look at the flyer.
Its wing was broken and sparking. The only reason that Keith had been able to see it in the first place was because of the bright light that flashed every few ticks.
The storm must have downed it, who knows what kind of debris winds like these could pick up and hurl around.
Lance touched down beside him, frowning angrily. "Really?" he muttered.
Keith sighed. Lance had been right. They should have turned around. There was no way they could catch up to or track down the last two flyers in this weather. And who knows what other Galra defenses the others could be fighting off back at that tower right now.
"Lance," Keith started. He wanted to apologize, sometimes he was too impulsive for his own good. But he never got to finish his sentence.
The ground beneath the lions and the flyer began to shake and rumble and before either of the paladins could think to launch back into the air they were sinking. In the time span of one tick the ground below them cracked open and swallowed them up before all of the surrounding sand sank back into the hole they created.
"Lance!" Keith yelled, pulling on his lion's controls trying to get out.
"I'm stuck!" Lance shouted back. All of the light from above was extinguished and they were truly buried alive.
Keith jerked on the controls some more but every time the blasters turned on he seemed to sink a little further. He slammed his fists down on the arms of his chair and grunted angrily.
"I'm stuck too."
"What the heck happened?!" Lance video feed showed him scanning over all of his lion's readouts.
"There must have been an earthquake, or too much weight focused on one spot." Keith tried to explain. Lance stopped looking at his readouts and huffed, glaring at Keith.
"I told you that we should pull back- that the others were waiting. But did you listen? No!"
"Lance I-"
"You can't do things on your own like that, we're a team."
"I know but-"
"Gah! No one wants to listen to Lance! Lance is so stupid- pendejo!" Lance threw his hands up in the air before crossing them over his chest and slumping back in his chair.
Keith frowned, knowing that he was speaking Spanish but not knowing what the word meant. Lance had started teaching him some Spanish not too long ago, but he was still on simple things like learning the alphabet- and also learning to use letters instead of characters and symbols.
"You were right." Keith said loudly to be heard over Lance's muttering. Lance looked up at him, still obviously mad but no longer ranting. "I shouldn't have done that but complaining about it now isn't gonna get us out of this mess." As soon as the words left his mouth the ground beneath them shifted again.
"Ah, cheese."
The ground gave out beneath them and they were free falling.
Keith may have let out an unmanly scream, but it was nothing compared to Lance's girlish squeal. In the back of his mind Keith realized that they were falling through a large cavern, sand and rocks falling with them. There were also small orange glowing lights spread about the walls, turning into glowing lines due to the speed they were going. However, the only thought at the forefront of his mind was, "Holy srite I'm falling!"
SPLASH
The impact knocked Keith out of his seat, causing him to bash his head against various parts of his cockpit. His vison went blurry and pain flooded his system and he wondered momentarily if the impact would have killed him if he hadn't been wearing his helmet.
His lion was sinking in clear dark water but stopped before the shoulders were submerged. He had reached the bottom of the little lake. Sand and dirt pattered down on his lion's face like rain on a tin roof but eventually ceased. When he looked up his vison swam, but he saw no light from above.
They wouldn't be getting out the way they came in.
"Ow..." Lance's whine came in as if from a far away place and suddenly Keith felt nauseous. "That wasn't fun."
"Now... now..." Keith tried to respond with the word 'nope' but he couldn't seem to get the word out the way he wanted. His vison began to go black-
...
When he came-to an angel was hauling him out of the jaws of a beast to the Above. Or more accurately, Lance was pulling him out of his lion by his arm pits to the shore of the lake. His brain was too addled with pain and confusion to really know the difference. He moaned as his head lolled to the side and sent the pain spinning around to his left ear.
"Dios!" Lance exclaimed, leaning down into Keith's face. Keith vaguely recalled Lance telling him once that word meant 'god.'
Whatever that was.
"Mm, hey." Keith blinked the blurriness away as best as he could as he looked into Lance's concerned blue eyes.
Lance frowned, narrowing his eyes at Keith before dropping him on the shore.
"Ouch!" Keith cradled his head in his arms as he looked at Lance in betrayal.
"That's what you get for not listening to me in the first place and then scaring the shit out of me with that little stunt you just pulled!"
"Stunt?" Keith was confused and his head was pounding. Lance's yelling wasn't helping.
Lance squawked at him. "Stunt he says!" He turned his back to Keith, taking a step away just to flip around again and point a finger in his direction. "You just stopped talking and disappeared from the camera! I had to haul my ass all the way into your lion just to see you passed out on the floor! I didn't know what happened, you looked like you were dead-" Lance choked on the last word, ceasing his rapid flow of words in exchange for an uneasy glance to the Blue lion, as if trying to find comfort.
Keith let go of his head and reached out to grab Lance's hand, dragging him to sit down beside him.
"I'm sorry." Lance muttered. "We've been out here for what seems like forever and it's like everything is weighing down on me at once." Lance pulled his knees to his chest and rested his chin there, looking at the ground before him.
Keith didn't know if Lance was talking about being in this cavern or being in space, but he had a feeling it had more to do with the latter.
"It's okay- it happens." Keith mimicked Lance's body language, hoping that it might somehow release the pressure in his brain. "I bashed my head against a bunch of stuff on the way down... I think I have a concussion." Lance sent him a side glance before he sighed, readjusting his head so that he was looking directly at Keith.
The pain in his mind momentarily ebbed at the sight, replaced with a stolen breath at how adorable he looked. How his soft skin seemed to glow in the pale orange light. With his inhibitions momentarily offline due to the ache in his head he reached out and touched Lance's cheek gently. He was disappointed when he realized that he still had his glove armor on and was unable to actually feel his skin.
"Keith," Lance whispered. Keith snapped out of his thoughts and pulled his hand back.
"There was dirt." He lied and shoved his face between his knees to hide his eyes. The pain shifted to his temples and turned into a stabbing sensation.
"How hard did you hit your head?" Lance asked as a soft hand rested atop his head, behind his ears. It was only there for a moment when the pain ebbed, but Lance yanked his hand back as if he had been burned and the pain came flooding back. Keith returned his gaze to the young man beside him and saw him clutch his head for a moment.
They must have accidently connected. Lance was starting to do it more frequently- whether or not he knew what was happening Keith couldn't tell. But as of right now he was more concerned that Lance had momentarily shared his pain.
"What the hell was that?" He stared at Keith, waiting for an answer.
Keith shrugged. "Maybe it has something to do with this planet," he lied. Lance frowned at him but said nothing more.
"What are we gonna do?" He asked, though Keith felt like the question wasn't really directed at him. They sat there in silence.
Keith tried to assess the situation. Both of their lions were submerged in the lake, Blue's jaw was just barely above the water but Red's shoulders were sticking out. The lions were accessible.
"Is blue still online?"
"Yeah, but it's not like we can just blast our way through the roof. The whole thing would just cave in."
Keith hummed in acknowledgement. Every problem couldn't be solved with giant robot lions after all. They would have to solve this on their own.
The communications with the others was down. Whether it be from the storm or some weird interference from the planet he didn't know. He did know that if comms were down it was likely that the others wouldn't be able to track them either. They probably wouldn't even guess that they sunk into the ground as there were likely no signs of it left.
Keith scanned over the rest of the cavern and saw the Galra flyer. It had missed the lake and was completely destroyed from the fall. The team wouldn't even have that to mark the spot.
An extremely powerful wave of pain stopped his thoughts and he clutched at his skull. He was in too much pain to be thinking this hard. He just wanted to lay down for a little bit.
"I can't see hardly anything." Lance muttered to himself as he stood from Keith's side. Keith didn't watch him go. Moving his eyes made the pressure unbearable. Lance's steps rang out loudly and Keith folded his ears down to reduce the volume but it didn't help. An even louder crunching and shattering noise broke through his ear drums. He couldn't take it anymore. He changed to his human ears, grunting and clenching his teeth as he did so.
The sound was reduced.
"Okay then. That's... Better?" Lance's confused voice called Keith attention. Slowly Keith turned around and saw Lance holding out two large, orange glowing crystals that he had broken off of the cave wall. "They feel... warm." Lance shot him a questioning glance.
"Don't look at me. I don't know what those crazy crystals-" Keith cut himself off, vaguely recalling the information he had been reading on the planet. There was some crazy crystal that had healing properties, right? What were they called? Something with 'pole' in it.
It didn't matter what they were called. "Bring one of those here." Keith waved Lance over.
"Please." Lance whinnied but Keith couldn't care less about niceties at the moment. Just making the pressure in his skull go away.
"Please," He appeased him. Lance brought the crystals over and handed the smaller one to Keith. The moment that Keith touched it to the bare skin of his face a gentle shock coursed through him and was quickly followed by a cooling sensation filling his skull.
Keith sighed and closed his eyes as he placed the crystal on the back of his neck, holding it there and relishing in the relief. The pain wasn't gone entirely, but it was enough for him to think without pain muddling his thoughts.
"Uh... Keith."
"Hm?" Keith's eyes cracked open and caught sight of Lance raising a thin eyebrow at him. He raked his eyes up and down Keith's body.
His full Galra body.
Keith never thought that he would be startled by his own body but here he was, throwing the crystal away and kicking up dirt and sand trying to get away from his own feet which were popping his boot armor out of place. It took him a moment before he was able to switch back to human and even then he couldn't force his left eye, both ears, and his teeth to go back.
"What the hell just happened? You're still purple and..." Lance stared at Keith's face. "Galra."
"I don't know. That crystal must have done something. It's supposed to have healing properties and I thought it could help my concussion-"
"How do you know-"
Keith cut him off. "I read the report Allura made."
"Okay... Did it help your head?" Keith nodded, noticing the pain seemed to be going away with every second. He cut his eyes to the crystal he had thrown and noticed that it had changed colors. It was a swirling purple and red. He crawled over and grabbed it, holding it up for Lance to see.
"Huh." Lance grabbed it, shrugging before handing it back. "Space is crazy." Was his only comment on it. He began to walk around the walls of the cave, running his hand along the rock as he went. Keith pocketed his palm-sized crystal and searched for his helmet. Lance's was by the shore, haphazardly thrown there. He scanned the cavern floor but saw nothing other than the occasional orange crystal.
Keith couldn't find it out here so it must still be in his lion. Maybe Lance took it off of him before he dragged him out.
He called Red down to him and climbed aboard when his massive jaw opened for him. He shuffled around the cockpit for a moment, putting some things that had fallen out of place back upright, before he found his helmet.
He knew that his helmet was red as blood, but now it was also filled with blood. The inside had a good amount of not-quite-dry blood on the right side. He lifted his hand and touched his head gently, pulling his glove away to see that- yes, he had been bleeding and yes, he was still bleeding.
Keith looked around, finding some gauze in a first aid kit attached to the underside of his seat. He wrapped his wound as best as his wild hair would let him and used the excess to wipe out the inside of his helmet. Once clean (enough) he pulled it on.
"Hey Keith." Lance's voice came in through his helmet and he walked to the front of the cock pit to look down at him.
"Yeah?"
"I think I found a way out, so hurry up and get your ass down here." Lance waved his arm in a 'come on' motion as if he knew that Keith could see him. Keith just rolled his eyes- though one wouldn't be able to tell if they were only looking at his Galra eye- and made his way back to the ground.
Lance turned and lead the way towards the end of the cavern, revealing a slightly hidden pathway about 8 feet high that twisted immediately to the left.
"Any clue how far it goes?"
"I followed it a little bit of the way and it didn't seem to be ending anytime soon so I came back to get you."
Keith glanced back at their lions and watched as either of their particle barriers rose up around them, displacing the lake water. There was nothing they could do about them. For now, they would have to go on their own.
"After you." Keith gestured to the tunnel and then they were on their way.
The tunnel wound on and on. Occasionally they would come across caverns similar to their own with small ponds or lakes.
To prevent getting lost or being unable to find their way back to their lions they would break off some crystals from the walls every so often and form an 'x' with them. Now, their plan wasn't infallible. If an earthquake hit it could jostle the crystals out of place and make their lives even more difficult than they already were but they couldn't spend a lot of time agonizing over it.
As they advanced through the dim tunnels they noticed a sound they hadn't heard previously. It was a soft clicking noise that was getting progressively louder the further they went. The crystals were also getting brighter, making it much easier for Lance to see and much more painful to Keith's left eye.
Change, change, change!
Keith tried once again to switch back to his human features but only managed to shove his teeth back up until they were shorter and dulled over.
Fine.
He followed Lance's lead, sticking to the left wall as the tunnel took a left turn, light leaking in from further ahead. Slowly they edged around the turn until they could see what lied ahead.
It looked like a whole new world.
Before them a cavern stood, hundreds of feet tall and hundreds of feet wide. Along the edges of the cavern were what appeared to be homes. Holes in the walls that were shaped like doorways along with smaller holes beside them- windows. The middle of the cavern dipped, holding mines that seemed to sink down into the ground endlessly. Large orange crystals were imbedded in and on the tops of tall columns, creating a bright atmosphere.
But even with the warm, almost homely environment, Keith could only feel uneasiness. The evidence showed that many people lived here.
But there wasn't a soul in sight.
Lance gave Keith a confused look to show that he was just as unnerved by this as he was. Keith nodded and pointed down towards the mines where the sound was coming from. If he hadn't been wearing his helmet his ears would have swiveled towards it. With a nod the two of them began to descend into the mines, hugging the shadows and staying as quiet as they could.
It took them around 20 dobashes of walking before they saw the first sign of life in the form of a Galra sentry. Keith took it out with a swift blade strike before it could even shoot at them.
"I guess the Galra have already made themselves at home." Lance mused.
"Yeah. We should be careful. I'm sure there will be more."
With that they dragged the body of the sentry to an out of the way tunnel to avoid detection. As they progressed they ran into more and more sentries, taking them out as they went. Finally, they came across the origin of the clicking sound which was now at a deafening level. Thousands of reptilian workers were mining away at a plethora of the orange crystals around them. Each of them had two arms and four legs and were wearing Galra prison garb bar one exception. All of them were wearing shoes and gloves as they mined away, depositing their wagon-loads of crystals into chutes that lead somewhere that neither of them could see.
The Genopians were fully enslaved and Keith and Lance were lionless, teamless, and stuck right in the middle of it.
...
editing? never heard of her.
Alright guys- I got this out as fast as I could for your reading enjoyment and I finally decided what exactly I wanted to do so be ready. This road is going to get bumpy.
yell at me on tumblr or insta- my tag is renncandraw
Thanks so much for reading; I love you gremlins <3