The light was blinding, all encompassing, and frankly, quite annoying. Keith groaned and tried to cover his face with an arm. Had Lance tried to wake all the paladins up for a bonding breakfast once again? His train of thought ended quite abruptly as he realized that the infuriating light was not going away. His arm seemed to be almost numb, as was the rest of his unresponsive body.
"Holy quiznak!"
The abrupt disruption jolted the rest of his drowsiness as he jerked upright. Or at least, tried to. The moment he thrust his head upward, his body lost balance and caused him to lurch to the right. As the world, very green, swirled in front of his eyes, Keith finally took a moment to absorb the deatails around him, was he on a planet? Had the castle been attacked while he was asleep? Where were the other paladins? And most importantly, why wouldn't his arm work? Keith looked down to answer his own question, and almost tipped over in alarm once again. Where his arm should have been, was instead a furry leg.
A loud screech, not very far from where he was, echoed through the forest he was currently lying in. Keith whipped his head around to confront the potential threat, his mind reeling to grasp all of the information swirling through his head. Fully prepared to face whatever alien he come to kill him, Keith tried to maneuver his now fuzzy limbs in front of him into a defensive crouch.
"Back off" he huffed, trying not to show the exhaustion taking over now that he was mostly off the ground with his new body. He narrowed his eyes at the strange...pile of goop?standing in front of him. It had a strangely fearful expression, looking almost through him with dull eyes and a quivering form. Keith advanced a few steps, testing to see if this strange creature would be spooked away.
The creature made a loud squeak once more and, with a lot of difficulty, Keith noted, tried to turn back the way it came from, shaking in unbridled fear.
"Lance come back!"
Keith's head shot up. Had he heard that correctly? Shiro's voice echoed around, knocking Keith back into focus. The unfamiliar goop in front of him also seemed to recognize the voice, as it twisted its neck almost fully around to stare the way Shiro's voice had come. "Shiro?" It whispered, then it broke into tears, shouting in a relieved and very familiar voice,"Shiro, help!"
Keith's ears perked up as the sound of crunching foliage rushed towards him. "Lance? Is that you?" He called out, moving cautiously toward the slime creature who had sounded suspiciously like Lance. "Lance?"
"Lance! Keith!" A blur of blue broke out across the red paladin's vision, startling him. In blind fear, he instinctively jumped backward, growling menacingly. The blur tumbled straight into the opposing bushes, scaring the blob quite a bit. There was a moment of chaos as all tried to reorient themselves.
"Who's there?!" The purple goo squeaked, quivering from its place on the forest floor. The slime on its back was beginning to drip off, dissolving the grass that made contact with the toxic substance. Keith growls increased in volume, almost uncontrollable at this point, running on pure adrenaline and agitation. He snarled as the blue wolf looking animal slowly made its way back toward them, stepping carefully. "Woah woah, calm down you two, its me, Shiro." The wolf eased, raising both paws up defensively.
"Shiro?" A flood of relief coursed through Keith, putting a halt to his growling and allowing him to relax his new form. The creature he guessed was Lance also seemed to shrink in exhaustion, drooping slightly. "Thank goodness you two are alright" Shiro continued, "I wasn't sure it was you for a while there."
"Shiro-" Lance was cut off as the black paladin raised his paw, drawing both of their attention. "We need to discuss the situation calmly and get all our questions answered first."
"But Shi-"
"We should make a fire before we do anything else, I was able to sense you guys, don't ask me how, but I didn't feel anyone else we know around here. We might not be able to meet any of the others for a while if what my new abilities are telling me are true. We'll... talk about this new body change we've gone through after we've all calmed down a bit." Shiro went on, plowing through Lance's repeated insistence to talk.
"I think we should gather firewood first then, right Shiro?" Keith questioned, already moving towards the trees, eager to get to the bottom of their sudden transformation. Lance grunted in frustration from beside him, shapeless mouth already open again to speak.
"You guys, I can barely move." Keith froze. The former blue paladin made what Keith guessed was the most fake smile he had ever seen come from Lance, and stated,"And more importantly-"
Shiro's face dropped, Keith's own featured morphed into horror as he finally got a good look at Lance, eyes dull and film covered, looking slightly off from where Shiro and Keith were actually standing. His mind filtering in all the truths with Lance's dismal tone of voice.
"I can't see"