Leo had to ditch the idea of assembling emote for a moment as he watched disaster unfold, Lance unable to put it on pause long enough to free Jason and Piper who were still bound. It was with a heavy eye and flitting glance around the room that served no real purpose that he did it; he thrust his hand away from his body, towards a chain dangling from the ceiling, some work in progress or another suspended by it, and prayed to God - or The Gods - that it would work.

He hadn't don it in a long time, he had been to scared to, but, by some miracle, the flame arose from seemingly nowhere and flew. It was hot and the chain was made of pretty thin, rusting metal that would probably snap of its own accord before the year was done. Needless to say, the chain broke and the suspended work fell. Right onto two of the three cyclopes.

Lance's head whipped around in a second, eyes questioning, looking for answers. But, when he caught leo's expression, he didn't voice a single one of his curiosities, just nodded and turned to the last cyclops, stunned to stillness, and sent a bullet right through him.

All of a sudden, the only noises in the warehouse were sighs of relief and the metallic clinking of the cartridge of the bullet clattering to the floor by Lance's feet.

Leo looked at lance and both quickly ran forward to untie their friends and book it out of there before any one of the three monsters could reform.

They stumbled out of the door in an unorganised cluster, almost falling over each other as they breathed heavily in the relief they hadn't had time to properly express before. After a moment, Jason stood up and slammed the door closed as the piles of dust on the floor began to reform, building up piece by piece into a grotesque monster that would soon attack them once again.

"What do we do about them?" he asked, knowing full well they couldn't just make a quick getaway if Festus wasn't in working condition yet.

"We pile a load of stuff against it and hopes that holds long enough for us to leave." Lance suggested.

"That's awfully optimistic," Piper fretted, worrying the hem of her t-shirt between her fingers.

"It's not." Lance told her "It's just the only option we have right now - unless, of course, anyone else has one?"

No one made a move to propose a new idea.

"Welp, I guess that settles it. Leo, you know what you're doing more than any of us do - you go fix festus, we'll try to trap these things. I guess you can scream if anything happens and we'll come over."
Leo sighed "Geez, thanks Lance. How very kind you are." But, despite the abundance of sarcasm that filled his voice, he knew Lance was being nice. Lance knew about Leo's fire but he wasn't saying anything and was leaving Leo space to use it and fix things far more quickly than he would be able to without it. So he left with no further complaints, rounding the corner and picking up where he and lance had hurriedly left off.

They had gotten lucky with the amount of miscellaneous items were scattered outside of the rundown warehouse, some much heavier than others. There was a car door that Lane carried over with ease but then a proceeding engine he huffed when lifting and stumbled forward with like a headless chicken until Jason came to help him.

That was the last of the items. They all fell back again, backs pressed against the rough pile that was slowly but surely cutting into them and definitely leaving rather prominent smears of grease on their clothes. Lance had ditched his jacket a while ago, both sitting in his lap.

"How the quiznak does something that small weigh that much?!" lance asked the second he hit the floor.

There was dead silence for a moment before both Piper and Jason had slid down from their sitting position in raucous fits of laughter.

"What? What? Why are you laughing?" Lance was just thoroughly bewildered by the seemingly unprovoked laughter that surrounded him.

"Qu-qui-" Piper started before breaking off into another fit of laughter that only escalated Jason's own.

"Wha-at" Lance asked again, almost a whine, the syllable stretched out.

"Quiznak!" She finally managed before falling back into her laughter.

"Quiznak? Lance was confused once again "What is quiznak?"

"How should we know?" Jason had managed to calm himself somewhat "You're the one that said it."

"Yeah!" Piper was still giggling a bit, but not so much as before "You should be telling us what it means!" She was gasping for air at the end of the sentence, trying to gulp back the ends of her laughter.

"Amnesia," Lance cocked an eyebrow "remember?"

"But-" Piper began.

"No." Lance cut her off abruptly "No buts. Shut your quiznak!"

Piper didn't have time to laugh again as Leo rounded the corner, Festus in tow, back in working order.

Leo was getting sort of weirded out as they flew through the pale blue skies, shrouded in barely-there wisps of cloud and being vaguely blinded by the distant glare of the sun. That was because the blue of the sky wasn't the only blue he could see. The other was Lance's eyes. That were opened wide. Looking at him. Not blinking. Staring.

Eventually, as Leo realised turning around wasn't doing much when he could literally feel lance's gaze drilling holes into the back of his head, he just looked over his shoulder and asked the question he had wanted to ask for the last half an hour.

"What?" he asked "You haven't blinked in so long it's actually starting to scare me."
"What's the name?" Lance mumbled, not really to Leo, more to himself. Thin eyebrows lowered over still firmly fixed eyes.

"What?

"What is it?"

"Lance!" Piper had peered around his shoulder after she heard the not-quite conversation and jabbed him hard in the spine as she yelled his name in his ear.

"Ah! Yes sir - I was listening, the answer to number three is 27!"

"What?" Leo asked, not understanding the spiel of nonsense Lance spoke.

"No idea." Lance deadpanned "What is it?"

"Why have you been staring at me?"

"I have?" Leo nodded "Well, you know how I'd always say you were like someone I knew when we were at the Wilderness school?" he nodded again "I still can't think of their name."

"You said it was P-something most of the time, but sometimes it's turn into a K."

"Hmm," Lance made a noise of agreement as he sunk his chin into the palm of his hand, eyes cast downwards as his mouth shifted upwards.

One minute.

Two minutes.

Three minutes.

Then, finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he snapped his fingers sharply, eyes widening once again.

"Pidge!" he exclaimed, completely catching everyone by surprise.

"What?" Leo asked after the initial surprise of the shout - the same which had caused the last couple of birds who were brave enough to fly near Festus to fly away in fear - had faded.

"Pidge - the friend you remind me of!"

"You had a friend called Pidge?" Jason asked from the back, speaking for the first time in a while.

"Have." Lance corrected "She's still my friend - I guess I just need to find her again."
"In Cuba?" Leo asked, thinking back to camp Halfblood, still kind of wishing they were there still.

"No," Lance shook his head, words (or word) adamant even if his face was not.

"How are you so sure?" Leo asked, not looking at Lance but rather at the sky ahead of them off into the distance where they were slowly heading.

"I don't know."

A moment more passed in yet another bout of silence.

Then Leo broke it.

"Wait," He turned around again "Where did the K come from?"

"I wish I could tell you,"

Jason had sat there in near silence for the entirety of the conversation because he was trying to do the same thing - trying to fish for a memory. Well, it wasn't quite fishing for a memory, it was fishing for the barest trace of one.

"I guess you can remember a friend's name and not your own last name, huh?" Leo said to Lance who sort of stared distantly beyond him, off at the seemingly empty space that stretched above them.

"Yeah," His answer was just as distant as his mannerisms at that moment. It may have seemed empty but Lane felt like that space above them was anything but. It felt familiar, as if it was full of life; he wished he had any semblance of an idea as to why.

It started raining before they got to Chicago. All of a sudden they passed from clear skies into a dense, grey cloud cover that poured down on them. It was that awful sort of rain, the cold sort that pummelled you skin unrelentingly, the type that was speckled with large pieces of hail that hurt whether the skin they hit was bare or not. Yet, at the same time, it was the same sort that soaked you all at once rather than just in little dots that gradually grew, the type that made your hair go frizzy.

Lance had quickly rushed to pull his coat out of his back, promptly putting it on, doing it up and pulling the hood over his head, his eyes hidden in the shadow of the extra fabric.

"Unfair," Jason commented dryly as Piper zipped up her bodywarmer and tugged down her own hood.

"Live with it." Both she and Lance said wryly, giggling.

"I can't believe we were being attacked by cyclopes a few hours ago." Leo laughed.

"Me neither," Piper said "I'm not sure how much I can believe Cyclopes even exist."

Jason remained silent in the conversation and Leo and Piper were well aware as to why - of course he was used to this, he had always vaguely told them he was aware of these things, even if only in passing due to his memory. But, as always when they talked about things so completely mind-bogglingly insane as real mythological monsters, Lance stood far out from it - though, in actuality, he was sitting right in between it - without any sort of explanation.

It constantly made Leo and Piper wish both Jason and Lance had their memories - in addition to the obvious fact the two were their friends and obviously severely annoyed when they could not recall anything about their lives - because they were sure these two people would have some of the most interesting stories and experiences to share, the most intriguing people to talk about and - Leo's personal favourite - the funniest but most confusing, convoluted, you-had-to-be-there-esque inside jokes.

A/N

I'm sorry to be giving you a fairly short chapter after how long it's been but I was busy and there really wasn't all that much more to say in this chapter.

I'd like to clear up that Voltron will be in this eventually, but it is going to take a while. Also, because I've had people asking about this and I hadn't put much consideration into this before, I think I need to sort out what, if any, ships from Voltron there will be. So there is a poll on my profile. There is a gen option as well as klance and Shallura so, if you'd like to have a say on ships, go vote on this poll. I'll take it down when Voltron actually com into this and am only putting it up so early because I want to get as many opinions as possible. Also, I can put subtle hints of the leading choice in every now and then, but not enough to make it a problem if another option ends up on top at the end.

Edit: So I had someone say they couldn't see the poll - that should be fixed now. Sorry.

All the best,

We'reAllABitOdd