"It starts," says Lance, "with a typical day in the castle."
"The diplomatic talks are proceeding nicely," Allura reports to Coran - meaning no political backstabbing or nefarious plotting to keep things interesting. "How are the Paladins handling escorting the rebels' medical supply transports?"
"On schedule and set to arrive back here in roughly four vargas," says Coran. "I'm taking advantage of all this downtime to do a bit of maintenance to the castle's computer systems." Meaning that the unrelenting, guilt-ridden reminders to update the OS had finally driven Coran to commit to closing and saving all those open files before the required reboot.
"Is that wise," asks Allura, "given that you're all alone in the castle?"
"Oh, I'm certain that nothing will go wrong," replies Coran - meaning the Altean hadn't seen nearly enough Earth movies, because you should never, ever, say that.
And in fact, at that very moment, a Galra agent had slipped by the castles' defenses and was making her way down a darkened hallway, the only light emanating from her two glowing, yellow eyes.
"Wait, hold on," interrupts Keith, "did this really happen? Or, are you just telling a story-"
"Shush," goes Lance and gestures Keith to be quiet as he continues.
The intruder makes her way down the castle corridor, her soft feet silent, unrelenting. From the corner of her eye, she catches a bit of blue, almost like a fluttering ribbon, disappear through a doorway. She freezes. Her ears point up and she turns her head to catch the sound of scampering.
Evolutionary instinct battles with Haggar's orders. In the end, the mission wins out and she resumes her slinky walk toward the doors at the end of the hallway.
"Slinky?" asks Pidge. Lance, enthralled in the telling, ignores her sarcastic quip.
At the doorway, the trespasser draws on the quintessence that flows through her veins. The panels slide open to reveal a bucolic virtual pasture and a four-legged creature contentedly chewing her cud. The beautiful bovine bends down to inspect the visitor and says, "Moo?" Meaning, in cow talk, Kitty want milk?
But the Galra demon-cat Kova doesn't speak cow.
"And is probably lactose intolerant," adds Hunk, because he's been quiet for a long, long time and it's not like everyone else hasn't gotten a chance to interject.
Kova regards the clever disguise the Alteans have chosen for the preserved AI consciousness of their dearly departed monarch. Sendek's last transmission had alerted Haggar to this valuable resource, not to mention emotional comfort to Princess Allura, and had sent her creepy, but also magical, feline to destroy it. It would only take one quick swipe from the cat's poison-laden claws to bring Kaltenecker down. Kova pulls back, her front paws kneading the ground in anticipation. But just as she pounces, the air erupts with lasers and squeaks.
Kova turns mid-air. If she'd had fur, it would all have been standing on end. Charging at her is a murine iron behemoth, a good head taller than Kova and swinging a flaming sword.
"A flaming sword?" Keith has reached the end of his patience. Also, Lance was incorporating an interpretive dance element into the story and needed to be stopped. "You're saying this … thing," Keith gestures toward the two-foot-high robot mouse that Platt and Plachu are earnestly polishing, "has a flaming sword?"
"We call it the Mighty Mouse," says Lance and pats the metal head.
"Technically it's the X-47," says Hunk, "and the sword is more glow-y than fire-y, but's it got this vibration cutting edge that should be quite effective. We had a couple of Balmera shards lying about and maybe it's from sharing a cryopod with the princess for 10,000 years, but we've discovered that Chuchule can channel Quintessence."
Keith decides not to get drawn into technical details. "I still don't understand what compelled you three to build the space mice their own fighting robot."
"Keith," says Lance, "weren't you listening to the use-case scenario? What if Haggar's cat were to sneak onboard-"
"I'd think it more likely Kova would be sent to sabotage our healing pods, or poison the food goo machine, not attack our cow."
Lance shrugs, "Practically speaking yes, but I find that it packs more emotional punch if a beloved secondary character's life is on the line. Anyway, the universe is filled with dangerous aliens and some of them are small. Like the face suckers from Aliens, or gremlins, or …"
"Tribbles," adds Pidge.
"You built this thing for tribbles?"
It's Pidge's turn to shrug. "As the shortest member of the team, I thought it prudent to have an alternative option to send down the ventilation shafts and air ducts. I get claustrophobic."
"Honestly," admits Hunk, "Lance had me at robot mouse."
Keith wants to argue the idiocy of devoting the team's scientific and engineering skills to the construction of something that looks like the best-in-show at a Maker Faire. But all four space mice are giving him big, watery, emotion-filled eyes, so he sighs and says, "What was it you wanted my help with?"
"Training," explains Hunk, "Lance has gotten them up to speed with the laser guns, but the little guys are having trouble maneuvering the X-47 and using the sword for close combat. We thought you could program the training deck with some smaller battle bots and maybe set up an obstacle course for them to fly around."
"This thing can fly?" a smidgen of curiosity creeps into Keith's voice.
"With its ears," says Pidge, "like Dumbo."
"Okay," Keith motions to the mice and their robot, "but no more crazy animal contraptions. I don't want a cybernetic Kaltenecker or anything like that," he adds over his shoulder as he leaves the room.
The three remaining Paladins say nothing but give each other conspiratorial glances – and that can mean whatever you want it to.