I'm back! Enjoy!
Disclaimer- Y'all know this by now, right?
"What happened to this place?" Allura gasped out as the Castle of Lions entered Thrakzian's atmosphere. The entire planet was almost completely a desert with only a few small patches of green spread out, Allura could tell that this wasn't the natural environment for the planet though, ruins of large cities, destroyed buildings, and the ground seemed to have been burned.
"What could have done this?" She couldn't believe her eyes, she had seen her fair share of destruction while piloting the Castle and working with the Paladins, but the entire planet had been destroyed. There was only one question that remained in her mind- was this due to a devastating natural disaster or was there a more sinister force behind this?
"We need to focus on finding the Paladins, Princess." Coran's voice pulled her from her thoughts, "Now that we're below the Thrakzian's upper atmosphere we can use the short-range scanners to find them, although due to the damage of the ship, it might take some time."
"Right, how did the power transfer go?" One thing at a time, the Paladins came first, then they had to fix the Castle of Lions, after they accomplished those two tasks, then she could look into this planet's history.
"We lost half of our speed, but the weapons system is back online, and the shields are almost fully charged while the healing pods have full power and are ready to be used if needed." Coran and Allura both heaved a sigh of relief at his words, in all honesty, their situation was slowly becoming less desperate.
"Good. Active the scanners to search the whole planet for the Lions, once we find one, we'll go pick them up and throw their Paladin in a Pod." The space mice saluted her and huddled in front of the appropriate screen to help in the search for the missing Paladins.
"Are we there yet?" Lance jokingly drawled out when he woke up from his nap, after the two of them had checked on both Red and Black, they had decided to switch places. The green lion was a lot further from their position then the other Lion's had been, so Keith half-suggested, half-threatened Lance to rest while he took over and piloted Blue.
"Not yet. Go back to sleep, you need it." Keith glanced down at him, he wasn't bleeding and he maintained steady color in his face, but Keith was still worried about him. He knew that none of the Paladins had taken the time to properly attempt to fix themselves up, they had all instead decided to stubbornly ignore their injuries and focus on the task at hand. It wasn't one of their smartest decisions, and it definitely wasn't a healthy one, but it did help them to keep moving toward their goal.
"I'm alright. How are you doing?"
"Just fine."
"That's a lie if I ever heard one." Lance scoffed, "You drive, but let me see that leg."
"It's fine Lance." Keith swatted his hand away, but Lance wasn't having that.
"Keith, you probably don't even remember now, but when we fought that creature he threw you outside; not to mention, even before that, you ran all the way from Red to me. If we don't take care of that, it will get infected! And don't even get me started on you nearly blowing up!" Lance gave him the most intense glare that he could muster before grabbing the med kit and dropping to his knees next to Keith's leg.
Lance carefully removed the armor plating on Keith's leg that had at least partially been protecting the wound from the elements, the bandages from the last time they did this were still intact and he didn't seem to be bleeding at the moment. Lance removed the old wrappings, cleaned the wound again, rewrapped him, and put the plating back into place without a problem. He did, however, encounter a problem when he tried to take Keith's left hand.
"Come on, let me see it." Lance tried again.
"No, it's fine. Besides if you do anything to my hand right now I can't fly."
"Okay first of all, we're not flying, and second you only need one hand for this, look around it's a desert. Now give it." Keith couldn't come up with a good response to that, so Lance used that opportunity to snatch his hand away, but Lance knew the real reason why Keith didn't want to give him his hand; his hand was actually hurting him. Before Keith could mount a proper argument, Lance had already stolen his hand, removed the armor, and started inspecting him.
The burns on Keith's forearm were healing nicely since the last time they did this, the arm was now an angry shade of red instead of actual burns; his hand however, was much worse than simply red; while still angry, the skin of his hand was also covered in bloody burns and swollen spots. Keith hissed when Lance started reapplying the burn cream on his arm and hand, Lance made sure that his hand had a thick covering before wrapping the burned areas and securing the bandages on his bicep.
"Feel better?" Lance questioned, still gingerly holding Keith's arm while it relaxed.
"Stings like hell, but I suppose that's a good thing." He slowly started moving his arm, it felt strange to him, but the cream was beginning to give a cooling tingle that was soothing his arm helping him to use it normally without pain.
"Now how close are we to Green?"
"Lance that took you what, ten minutes? We still have a ways to go. The trip from Green to Yellow will be much shorter though."
Lance dramatically flopped to the floor of Blue, he swore right then and there that he would never take flying for granted again.
"If you could just hurry up and die or regain consciousness that'd be great, you know." Bhishak mutter to the unconscious Omisha, it had felt like days since he had been assigned to watch him. Now he was forced to sit here and watch this half-dead being instead of being in what appeared to be an incredibly important meeting with his mentor.
"Don't let Leader hear you say that."
"Don't you have somewhere else to be Jeevak? Don't tell me you ran out of heavy things to lift or throw around?" Bhishak sighed as the large, muscular man named Jeevak lowered his impressive bulk into the chair on the other side of Omisha.
"There's actually plenty for me to do, but I got recalled at the same time that this meeting was called in. Got nothing to do, same as you, so I figured I'd see who was called and who got left out, plus I was hoping for the chance to annoy you too. I'm assuming that Kritanta is in there?"
"She bounced her happy ass in there alright. If you got recalled, then Thanatos got called in right? Why would they need you two knuckleheads? You two are strong as hell I'll give you that, but you guys aren't exactly the sharpest tools in the shed, are you?"
"He's in there, as what appears to be all of the Elites and Captains, not counting you of course. You sure you're actually a Captain?"
Bhishak hummed in response, as usual, they ignored the digs thrown around at each other. These two couldn't be more different, Bhishak was tall and thin with his laid-back attitude represented in his light blue hair, he was a Healer who focus was on the health of his comrades and on defense, any attacks he had were long-distance. On the other hand, Jeevak was extremely broad and a little shorter while his more fiery attitude was shown in his bright orange hair, he was known as a 'heavy hitter' his job was all about short-ranged damage and destruction while also using his monstrous strength to help out with the manual labor around their headquarters and other outposts. Despite their differences they had come up with their own little routine whenever they saw each other, Bhishak could use his sharp wit to make sassy comments without getting scolded and Jeevak could tease to his heart's content without either one getting offended.
"What exactly happened to Omisha anyways?" Jeevak questioned after a moment of silence.
"From what I can piece together, he went with Dearil to the Black One to get the blood before being sent to the Blue One on his own to collect that blood. He was overdue on reporting in, but before we sent the Scouts after him, he showed up beaten and bloody with his tail between his legs. He rambled on about how after he got the blood another one showed up and he ended up getting seen and electrocuted even, before passing out on us."
"How was he seen and electrocuted if he already had the blood?"
"That's what doesn't make sense to me. We run off of 'Get in. Get out.' guys like you are hardly used anymore because of that motto. I don't get it."
Jeevak thought about that for a moment; it was true, he wasn't very smart, but he certainly wasn't an idiot. He knew his blue-haired counterpart enough to know that this was bugging the crap out of him, so he helped out the only way he could, by asking questions and forcing Bhishak to work through it out loud.
"What happened after that? I was out in the field so I'm way out of the loop."
"I've heard that the Blue One is on the move now, Menahem came back a little while ago and I heard the report. Next, Leader was called in by the Elders, I still can't believe that, then he had Morana and Persefoni call in the Elites and most of the Captains, even busted out the old long-range communicators to contact those in the field."
"Wasn't the Blue One broken though, or at least offline? Why would it start up after Omisha came back?"
"Something about a bomb going off, oh yeah, Leader did ask me about a bomb when Omisha came back."
"Could it have been one of our bombs? How would that help them?"
"I'm pretty sure it was one of our electromagnetic bombs that are supposed to deactivate aircraft, this time though, it looks like they turned the 'explosion' into power to get them running again."
"What's with the finger quotes around explosion?"
"The way we make those bombs doesn't require gunpowder or anything like that so they don't really explode they just kinda spark and shock."
Jeevak made an 'oh' face before falling silent again, he wanted to help Bhishak, but he was having trouble finding the right questions to ask.
"I know what you're doing." Bhishak's voice pulled him back out of his head.
"What do you mean?" He asked innocently.
"You think that if you sit here and bombard me with questions I'll magically come up with the answer."
"To be fair, it's worked in the past, it was worth a try."
"Don't bother. I've been over it thousands of times, I've looked at every angle, thought of every motive, ran through every scenario there is and the only thing I got out of it was the mother of all headaches."
"At least that explains your pleasant mood. There a reason you're not in there?" Jeevak gestured in the vague direction of the meeting room.
"This guy is part of it, I'm supposed to keep him alive, and I'm apparently not a high enough rank for this meeting. They call me a Captain and I was officially given the title, but they really only use me as a full-fledge Captain when Kritanta isn't available."
"Look at that, a Captain that isn't 'captain' enough!"
"Very funny. Watch him for a minute? I've got to move around."
"Yeah go ahead."
His first few steps were a little shaky while he tried to get feeling back into his legs, he quickly found out that Jeevak wasn't joking, this place had become a ghost town. Just about everyone was either out in the field or stuck in the meeting, he guessed that the other outposts were the same. He made his way to the food hall to grab a drink while he had a chance hoping that it would help his headache. His head felt like it was trying to split open and even though he was a Healer he couldn't do anything about it, healing other people was hard, healing yourself was almost impossible. He just had to hope that his mentor would be done soon.
"BHISHAK!" His drink dropped to the ground and as a medic, he was positive that he had almost had a heart attack when his name was bellowed through the base.
"Really?!" It took him a moment, but he recognized the voice as the one belonging to Jeevak, choosing to ignore it for the time being before quickly remembering what the said man was doing.
"Oh crap." He abandoned his drink all together and sprinted down the halls that suddenly seemed much longer than when he had walked down them a few minutes earlier.
I hope everyone enjoyed that! I apologize for the wait and the slightly shorter chapter. February until the middle of May are my busiest months, but rest assured that I'm still putting the chapters out as fast as I can.
Also the vigilante story that I mentioned in the last chapter has officially been posted under the name "Night has Come" and has two chapters so far, so please check that out if you are interested.
Thank you so much for the amazing support! Chapter 11 coming up! See you next time!
~Keira540