A/N: This is just a little... character study, I guess? The idea had been swimming in my head for awhile and I wrote it down shortly after posting the first one shot.
Title: Early Days
Summary: Natalie is trying to puzzle out their team's newest addition: Lance.
Rating: K+
Warnings: Mild violence
Genre: Friendship
World: Post EBF2, but Pre EBF3
Lance was a new dynamic to the group that made Natalie uncomfortable. The mage wasn't entirely sure why she had agreed to let the gunner join their team. Looking back over the whole ordeal they had gone through to stop Lance's world take over made the decision make even less sense. She understood letting the young man live, but having him join their team? "It must've been the beer party we had to celebrate beating him," Natalie mused, "I was probably tipsy when I said 'yes' to Matt."
The mage wished she hadn't said yes, though. Matt was weird, but at least she'd known him for long enough to understand his quirks; she even found most of them endearing. Lance, however, was a complete mystery, and one Natalie wasn't so sure she wanted to solve. He almost never smiled, for one. In fact, the gunner hardly expressed any emotions besides a smirk when he killed something. The man was practically a robot. He didn't seem to understand some of the things she and Matt said or did, especially if they were a spontaneous reaction to some situation. Lance's eyes would briefly flash with some strange emotion only for whatever the feeling was to be smothered under his usual icy mask a second later. Natalie idly thought that he almost looked curious.
In combat, Natalie readily admitted that the gunner was a welcome addition to the team. On top of being a heavy artillery specialist, Lance could also use a strange weapon he called a gunblade—which was exactly what its name suggested— and he had a brilliant tactical sense. Matt and Natalie had swiftly found out that when Lance gave a suggestion in combat for positioning or pointed out an enemy's potential weakness, he was normally spot-on. The gunner's direction in combat led to a drastic decrease in wounds the party received while fighting and his ability to fight at close and long range were invaluable. The only thing Lance didn't do well was checking on his team mates if they got hit. He would continue attacking the enemy and didn't let up until whatever they were fighting was dead. Then, he would stand off to the side and silently watch as Natalie patched up whatever was hurt or broken. If Lance was the one injured, he would give Natalie a brusque 'thanks' before shifting away. Natalie wondered if he even cared about her and Matt's wellbeing. Given the fact that they had stopped his world conquest, she was inclined to think not.
"At least he's good at fighting. Now if only he didn't seem like a moving ice sculpture emotion-wise," Natalie thought as she chatted with Matt while waiting for their food to cook one evening. The gunner had just finished cleaning his gunblade and was now silently staring at the pair laughing and joking on the other side of the camp fire, his expression unreadable. That was another thing the mage realized; Lance never stood or sat near them unless it was in combat. Anytime Matt offered a seat next to them, Lance would hesitate briefly before he shook his head and settled down somewhere nearby, but not right next to them. Natalie didn't know what to think of that any more than she knew what to think of his offering to take first watch every night.
Natalie watched Lance closely as they traveled. She was fairly sure that the gunner knew she was staring, even though he never once looked her way; at least, not that she saw. Matt constantly spoke with Lance while they walked. His chatter ranged from random comments about the things they passed to asking questions about Lance himself. The gunner readily responded to the swordsman on anything except his history with a flat voice and cold expression. Lance's comments on fighting, monsters, and his teammates showed that he had a twisted sense of humor that Natalie didn't always agree with, but Matt certainly enjoyed. The only things they ever got about the gunner himself were how he had gotten his robot army and occasional vague tidbits of his childhood from the taunts he sometimes threw at weak enemies. The snippets painted a rather disturbing picture, but the mage never asked the gunner about them. Anytime she tried speaking with Lance she felt awkward and the gunner closed off even more than usual shortly after the conversations started. Natalie wondered why Lance seemed mostly okay talking with Matt, but not her.
The three had been a team for a little over a month and still Natalie was no closer to figuring out what to make of Lance. During the past few days, the gunner seemed edgy especially around Natalie and the mage wondered if he was planning on betraying them. The party was walking along an overgrown trail through a forest; Lance kept throwing weird looks at Matt and Natalie. Suddenly, two Giant Veggie Slimes oozed off of trees on either side of their group followed by a few smaller slimes. The gunner immediately shifted from edgy to collected as he directed Matt to deal with the enemies behind them. Lance used his gunblade in tandem with Natalie's magic, and together they took down the monsters blocking the way forward. The pair turned around to find that Matt had vanished along with the Giant Veggie Slime he had been fighting. Natalie panicked as she gazed around, trying to see or hear where the swordsman had disappeared to. She whipped around at rustling sound to see Lance walking off the trail they had been following, heading into the thick foliage of the forest.
"You're just going to ditch Matt?" Natalie shouted after the gunner in disbelief. "I knew you were planning to betray us; you've been so jumpy the last few days!"
Lance stopped and his shoulders stiffened as he replied quietly, "I know you don't trust me, Natalie, but I'm following a trail to find Matt. That Slime he was fighting was big enough to fold around him; it probably carried him off."
The mage's anger deflated only to be replaced with suspicion, "Why do you care if Matt gets eaten?"
The gunner turned and looked about to say something before he seemed to change his mind with a minute shake of his head. Finally, he said, "I would never be able to look at myself in the mirror if one of the people who beat me was killed by a Slime."
"That's your reason?" Natalie said incredulously. She wondered what Lance had decided not to say.
"One of them, anyway," Lance muttered, "Also, I refuse to let a party member die on my watch."
The mage blinked as shame filled her, "Oh."
"Since I seem to make you so uncomfortable, I'll be leaving after we find Matt," the gunner said, continuing onward along the slime trial left behind by the monster.
"You don't need to do that," Natalie said as she caught up to Lance. The gunner said nothing in reply, but his tense shoulders relaxed slightly. The jumbled puzzle pieces in the mage's head symbolizing the mystery that was Lance began to fall into place and make some sense. The sudden progress she had made was shattered a moment later when the gunner whipped around, fluidly loading and raising his gunblade through the motion. He aimed the weapon at Natalie's head and she gave a small shriek as he fired, "Lance?!"
A few seconds later, the mage opened her eyes to see Lance staring at her with wide eyes. A rustle came from behind the mage and she shakily turned in time to see a wraith cloak drift to the ground. She turned her stare back to the gunner to find that he was already turning away, back and shoulders tense again. The puzzle that had been briefly shattered fit back together again, this time with a few more pieces in place. The mage stepped up next to Lance and gave him a smile. The gunner said nothing and didn't return the look, but he relaxed once more. Natalie fit the last pieces of the puzzle together.
Lance stopped suddenly and held up his hand to halt Natalie's progress. He pointed through the bush in front of them and the mage leaned forward to peer through the branches. Almost immediately, she spotted Matt thrashing around, suspended in the middle of the Giant Veggie Slime from before. Unfortunately, the slices the swordsman made in the monster merely fused back together again, sustaining the gelatinous prison surrounding him.
The gunner leaned down to softly speak in Natalie's ear, "I want you to cast a weak ice spell on the Slime. If you harden its body enough, Matt can bust out. I'll run interference while you cast, okay?"
Natalie nodded firmly before following behind Lance as he stepped into the small clearing. While the gunner distracted the Slime, Natalie worked on freezing the monster's body. It took a few tries, but the creature finally froze enough for Matt to slash his way free. Lance finished the monster off with a Plasma Shot from the rifle on his back.
"Ugh, salad-flavored jello," Matt grumbled, spitting on the ground. After the swordsman had gotten the taste out of his mouth, he threw a grateful look at Lance and Natalie, "Thanks for saving me, guys."
The gunner said nothing, but Natalie grinned widely, "Lance is the one who deserves the thanks. He found the trail and came up with the plan to get you out; I just did what he said. I trust that if I had been the one stuck, he would have worked something else out to get me free, though." She smiled at the taken aback look on Lance's face as she said that. Her smile widened as the gunner's look of surprise morphed into a slight grin—the first one Natalie had ever seen from him.
The mage had more or less figured out their third party member. She doubted that Lance had had much human interaction before joining up with her and Matt, which explained his strange responses to certain things. He definitely cared about what happened to his party members in battle—it showed in his single-mindedness when killing foes. And finally, he had been wary of her because she had been wary of him. The mage was willing to bet that Lance saw her and Matt as friends, but was uncomfortable admitting that fact. Natalie was sure that there were more things to learn about her teammate, but what she had figured out so far was enough for now.
A/N: I really like Lance as a character; although, I'm probably best at writing for Matt. Anyway, I hope you all liked this. Please leave me a review!
