Prologue: Original Run

The first time Keith died, it was excruciating.

The thing that killed him looked like a tangled mess of writhing vines, topped with a gaping maw filled with rows of razor sharp teeth.

The glowing vines twisted together into powerful limbs, which emitted a nauseating blue glow.

"Maybe its friendly?" suggested the loud-mouth - Lance - hesitantly, shifting uneasily underneath Shiro's other arm.

The thing let out an awful cry, and started charging towards them.

Everything after that happened so quickly that Keith barely had time to react. As the thing came barrelling towards them, he unsheathed his dagger and pushed Shiro's dead weight at Lance in one smooth motion, taking a deliberate step in front of them.

"Get Shiro to my bike," he barked, and then without waiting to see if the other boy followed his order, he charged.

His knife slashed through the first vine that stabbed at him, and the creature let out an inhuman roar of frustration.

He wasn't fast enough to dodge the next attack.

One writhing limb split into five sharp vines, and they all impaled his body. One through each shoulder, two in his abdomen, and one through his thigh. Keith screamed like he'd never screamed before, voice catching in his throat and scouring lungs.

He was lifted bodily into the air, and flung aside violently.

The impact when he hit the ground knocked the breath from his body, and he rolled to a halt beside his hover-bike, gasping for breath.

He tried to force himself to get up because he could see the thing advancing on Lance and Shiro, but his limbs wouldn't obey. Searing pain clouded his senses, and all he could manage was a pathetic twitch.

The worst thing was that Lance wasn't moving, he was too busy staring at Keith in horror.

Keith tried to scream 'run!' but his mouth and throat were too full of blood.

Lance blinked and seemed to snap back to himself, turning back to face the monster.

He threw himself and Shiro to the ground in time to dodge a swipe of one its limb, but then they were trapped with nowhere to go, the monster bearing down on him.

Lance threw his body over Shiro's, curling around the older man like a protective shield, but it was no use. The creature ran them both through with one sharp vine, stabbing through the middle of Lance's back, sinking down through the centre of Shiro's chest underneath.

The creature withdrew the vine slowly, and it came out bright red. Lance's body convulsed once, before laying unnaturally still. Shiro didn't move or make a sound. Blood soaked into the parched floor of the desert, surrounding them like a bloody red halo.

"N-no," Keith managed to choke out. Shiro couldn't be dead, not when Keith had just found him. Lance couldn't be dead, couldn't have just sacrificed himself to try and save Shiro, someone he barely even knew.

The foreign presence that had been dully residing in the back of Keith's mind for the past six months, coaxing him into desert, suddenly twitched violently to the forefront. Instead of the gentle tickle of a slow moving stream that Keith was used to, it was a raging torrent of anguish and rage. Or were those his own feelings? It was hard to tell.

The creature turned its attention to the remaining survivors, the short girl and the large boy.

The large boy was frozen in fear and the girl was pulling on his arm with all her weight, screaming at him to move.

"Pidge, I want you to run. I'll buy you some time-" the boy said, snapping out of his stupor, taking a shaky step forward.

"What?! Hunk, no!"

It was too late; the creature was galloping towards them. Hunk gripped Pidge by the shoulders and shoved her towards Keith, towards the hover-bike.

"Fly away Pidge," his voice wobbled, but his fists didn't as he raised them in front of himself to face down the monster.

Hunk actually managed to dodge the vine that reached for him, before darting in close to throw a punch at the thing's jaw.

The blow only served to infuriate it further, and the angry gaping mouth clamped down on Hunk's shoulder, sinking its sharp teeth into his soft flesh.

Keith didn't know whose scream was more terrible, Hunk's or Pidge's. The creature jerked Hunk around like it was a cat and Hunk was a mouse.

Keith blinked and suddenly Pidge's sweaty tear-stained face was in front of him, blocking him from seeing what the creature was doing to Hunk that made him make such terrible pained sounds.

She snatched his dagger from his limp blood-soaked fingers. Keith managed to raise a hard to grip her wrist as she made to move away.

"T-take the b-bike-" he choked out, someone needs to warn the Garrison. Behind them Hunk screamed, and then there was a sick wet sound, like something was tearing. Pidge slipped out of his grip, and Keith could see that he'd left a bloody handprint on her sleeve.

"Can't reach the pedals," she said apologetically, shooting Keith a teary self-deprecating smile before hurtling away.

Keith watched helplessly as Pidge sprinted straight for the creature.

"Don't! Pidge! Get aw-" Hunk's voice cut out abruptly as the creature stomped down purposefully on his head with a sickening crack. Keith knew he was gone.

Pidge, tiny tiny Pidge, lunged forward with his dagger raised high, a fierce growl torn from her lips.

The creature was distracted with Hunk, so she actually managed to land a blow, sinking the dagger into the coiling mass that was above its gaping red-rimmed mouth.

It screeched furiously as fluorescent blue liquid gushed out of the cut, writhing and knocking Pidge to the ground.

It whipped around lightning fast and lashed out violently, spiking vines through Pidge's body, too many to count. Keith could see astonishment written all over her face. Her eyelids fluttered delicately behind her round glasses, and then light left her eyes.

The monster tossed her like she was a rag-doll, and she landed with a sickening thud near Shiro and Lance.

Grief and anger lent Keith the strength to struggle back to his feet. Black spots appeared in his vision, but he managed to stagger to his hover-bike.

With shaky blood soaked hands, he opened the compartment under the seat and dragged out the extra explosive.

His legs gave out and he landed in a messy heap on the ground. His head was spinning, blood-loss making him lightheaded, but he refused to give up.

He fumbled clumsily with the wires, fingers slippery and shaking, bypassing the timer mechanism, setting it to auto-detonate. He was ready.

"Hey! Come at me!" he bellowed.

The creature turned, finally realizing that Keith wasn't quite dead yet.

It charged, and once it was on top of him, Keith pulled out the lynch-pin with a bitter smirk.

There was a split second where Keith and the creature were face to face, where Keith could look into its beady fluorescent-blue eyes.

"You lose," he spat, and then world dissolved into blinding white light and agony. Every inch of him burned.

Even though this was the end for him, the end for all of them, he took savage satisfaction in knowing he took the monster down with them.

The last thing he felt was something wet and sticky dripping onto his face, and then everything went black.


So this is like that movie Edge of Tomorrow meets Voltron.

Whatcha think? :)