If you cannot tell, I am making this up as I go. Sorry for any and inconsistencies I will definitely have.
Did you hear a word I said?
This is not where I belong.
Who's going to miss me when I'm gone?
Submarines have too many buttons. Also, Keith Kogane is probably part bull shark.
1
Almost six months passed at the Garrison before Lance and Hunk managed to touch an actual submarine.
The classes bored Lance half to death, but Hunk was enthusiastic enough about certain lessons for the both of them. The uniforms were also hard to pull off, but Lance found comfort (as much as he could) in the fact that the unflattering hue was worn by all students. It wasn't like he had to sneak out of the Garrison with the suit on.
There were no classes with windows, which the youth was grateful for. He pondered about the town just a little more than he would've had the sea constantly been on his mind. Instead of looking for his skin, he found himself planning a night out in the town's local clubs with Hunk. (When he stepped outside, he tried very hard to not smell the salt in the air. It was stronger here than back in Hamoa.)
Granted, he did still search through the room he shared with Hunk, but at least he was smart enough to pretend that he was sleepwalking now. Hunk had mentioned it one morning, but they both shrugged it off and Lance's occasional scavenging went mostly ignored.
"I guess moving made you a sleepwalker," Hunk suggested. "The same thing happened to my cousin when he went on a trip to Ecumene." Lance hummed agreeably, but refused to comment further.
Defense subs were relatively new and built for a small crew. A crew of five was the standard, but the smaller the crew, the smaller the ship.
For the best subs, three was the magic number, according to whatever genius thought three semi-adults was actually enough to man a sub that required constant care.
From day one, their professor made it clear that manning that submarine would mean less sleep and more cramming the sciences that kept it from sinking.
"At least you each get your own bed," he told them in the same disregarding tone he liked to use often. "Back in my day we could have had nearly 200 sleep deprived sailors working on the sub and never enough beds."
Most recruits scoffed or winced at the mention of past submarines.
"This small vessel is called the Kraken. Built for a crew of three, like most battle subs here. It's probably the worst ship for those of you who want to slack off," his eye strayed on Lance's person for a second, long enough to offend, "but perfect for anyone who is willing to put in the effort. Only the best of the best can pilot this one."
His students peered at the Kraken with intrigue.
"Why?" a short boy with glasses asked.
"Because battleships such as this one need someone with quick reflexes and a good understanding of the system. It's got complicated mechanics, but it also has the speed of a great white, so it needs a good team." This time, his eyes skimmed a guy with a mullet. He looked away and continued to inform the class about their options in subs.
Lance narrowed his eyes at the professor's back and then looked at the mullet man. How was this guy any better at steering than him? He had reflexes too! And Hunk was top notch when it came to engineering, it worked out perfectly!
But we would need another nerd to join the crew, he thought, already imagining the dumb look on his instructor's face when he realized that the real MVP was actually Lance. With Hunk on his side, he knew he couldn't lose at this sudden rivalry (yes, it was on) but it didn't hurt to be safe.
He swiveled to face the short boy with glasses, recognizing him vaguely. "You," he pointed rudely, "You look like a nerd!"
"What?" the student asked in a high voice, looking offended. He probably was, Lance would realize later. But Hunk was a nerd too—really, little guy should have been proud.
"I want to pilot the Kraken, and I need you to be part of my crew!"
While it did seem to catch the other's intrigue, Lance didn't get to hear his response. His instructor interrupted their conversation from across the small hall, a brow raised mockingly.
"A little early to start recruiting, don't you think Mr. McClain?"
Lance scowled at the use of his supposed surname. Years ago, when he'd first met Hunk's parents, he had been asked, "What's your last name?"
"Name? My name is Lance."
"No no. What's your surname?"
"My sire's name is Maklain," he'd responded, confused. Selkies didn't have surnames. They didn't even really need names, but it made it easier to communicate on land and with other species that could speak, so his parents had told him his name was Lance. His mistake...
Still, Lance insisted that humans use the Garrett surname, why were they so adamant on calling him by his father's name at the garrison? First of all, weird, nobody even pronounced it the same. Second of all, how dare anyone bring up the topic of his family, especially in that tone?
He almost complained to the instructor, but remained quiet at the thought of losing his chance to pilot the Kraken. He had to learn to steer it before he got to the part where he stole it, after all.
Maybe he should discuss with Hunk the fact he planned to steal a sub?
Nah, he'll understand.
"Sir," Lance said through gritted teeth.
"Feel free to get a crew, McClain," the instructor said dully, "but remember that we choose which submarine you're best suited for." He turned away and continued the class, obviously smug, the jerk.
With little to do but glare, Lance glared. He glared at his teacher and he glared at mullet man. He would show them. He would show them all!
Hunk approached him and patted him on the back, a little hard. "Stop pouting, Lance, it looks like you're having a dramatic moment."
Oh, he was, but he wasn't about to give his best bud any sort of ammo.
"Whatever," Lance rolled his eyes casually. "I'm definitely getting that sub."
They followed the class, glasses guy following close behind with an intrigued look. He hadn't said no.
2
Glasses guy was one Pidge Holt. He also liked to glare at the teacher's back furiously sometimes, so Lance had an easy time enjoying the little guy's company.
Not that it was very easy to hang out with him. If they ever managed to spot him during lunch, Lance dragged Hunk over to his table to pick at Pidge's food and make fun of his glasses (typical icebreakers). He once tried to show him how to flirt with girls, but Pidge never showed any interest and Lance was too interested himself (in the girl) to care.
When he tried to show him to flirt with guys and got the same result, Lance decided Pidge was a terrible student.
Generally, Pidge strayed clear of the cafeteria, but Lance took no personal offence. The kid had been doing that since he joined the Garrison.
"Wonder what his secret is," he'd commented once to Hunk, who didn't believe there was any secret at all (or else he would be all over that, Lance knew).
Hunk said there probably was no secret.
Frankly, Lance would have agreed with him before, but Pidge was a very suspicious and sneaky individual. He should know (he'd mastered that crap years ago).
Also he seemed oddly interested in the Kereberos Mission that had failed a while ago. That was also a clue.
But Lance respected his privacy (in the most minimal sense, of course. He still felt the need to be friends, he was just like that—and being friends with Pidge involved what some would call "stalking" and Lance would call "perseverance"). Hunk liked Pidge too, and sometimes the two nerds would enjoy some sort of technical talk that Lance liked to consider their private inside jokes.
Maybe he should study more.
…
What the hell, it wasn't like he would drown if he didn't know what a magneto dynamo prop was. ("It's magneto-hydrodynamic propulsar, Lance. But you're right, you won't drown." See! Inside nerd lingo that he needn't bother with!)
Lance accepted that he would be dumbfounded by Hunk and Pidge's occasional bouts of nerdism.
What he couldn't very well accept was the amount of buttons on the stupid submarine he'd been first assigned (Octopulous, what kind of name was that?).
"What is what!" he growled in frustration the fifth time the teacher told him to sink the sub. He definitely studied the piloting gears, he knew what (most) things were called and their general location, but everything was so clustered together that he couldn't even fake being cool about the fact he could read none of the words.
How does one turn on a submarine? The years he had spent studying human written language (English) seemed to go out the window, taking the minuscule letters on the dashboard with them.
He ended up failing that simulation, but there were many to come after that. He wasn't the only one to fail either (but he had been the only one that couldn't manage to sink his own ship until explicitly told how, so that stung).
Star student: Keith Kogane.
That was total bunk if you asked Lance, but no one did, so he just turned to Hunk to tell him himself.
"Who does he think he is?" he asked, pacing their room. "Allstar? MVP?"
"I think he just really likes subs," Hunk suggested, frowning at Lance's feet as if to say, why so angry?
"Well, I need that sub," he muttered meaningfully, though Hunk didn't catch on. Why would he, of course. Hunk didn't need to know anything. War wasn't for the innocent.
Hunk certainly didn't need to fight an ocean war.
"You aren't really mad at him for being good at something?" Hunk asked rather incredulously.
"He doesn't even have any friends, who does he intend to pilot with?" Lance ignored his perfectly valid reasoning.
Hunk looked a little disapproving at that, but he couldn't very well retaliate. Keith Kogane was a lone wolf, famous for it even.
"You're not letting this go, are you?" the Hamoan sighed, and he sounded just a little confused. "Since when are you so competitive?"
"I've always been competitive."
"But not mean-spirited."
Sure, on some level he knew he was being a bit shortsighted, but he needed to vent. He had a reason, an actual reason, to join the Navy, unlike most of his classmates. (If he said that out loud too, Hunk would look at him disapprovingly again.)
There's a war going on out there, he reminded himself sometimes, staring at the ceiling and envisioning an ocean.
The ocean was just next door. If he dared, he could jump right off the roof of the school and land on top of a submarine, just to touch the saltwater.
It occurred to Lance that having the sea so (much) close(r) yet so far away might be making his nerves skyrocket. Just a bit. He considered this and decided that complaining to Hunk was officially out of bounds. He was good at stewing in anger, he should just do that.
Still, he couldn't simply play off his resentment like it was nothing.
"It's just a normal rivalry, Hunk," he leaned casually into his bed, shoulders touching the wall. He nodded and smiled appropriately, but his buddy looked doubtful. Let him, Lance would never tell.
He couldn't possibly hope to describe the desperation he felt when he saw Kogane receive an approving nod from their teacher. It was like he was walking away from the sea all over again, but this time it was being dragged away before his very eyes.
Lance swallowed hard. If I had my skin…
There were plenty of battle subs. Lance didn't have to be better than Keith Kogane, he just had to be good.
English letters became scribbles when Lance was underwater, so he had to relearn controls from the start. Thankfully, Lance wouldn't have to get in a real sub for a while. There was a simulator to crash for that.
He felt like a shark, crashing into the same rock.
Reading English wouldn't matter so much, if had my skin...
If he had his skin, he would leave it all behind, submarines be damned. He could learn some sorcery, he could learn to fight like Uncle Lot had tried teaching him years ago (he hadn't excelled and therefore gotten frustrated before reaching the best spells and moves).
Oh, but he was cursed to dry land in his human form. His only form. Because Lance didn't have his skin.
He tortured himself with these thoughts every night.
Lance, Hunk and Pidge watched as Keith got the Kraken. They got a regular research ship, big surprise. There was always next year (Lance found himself picking at his nails at the thought of waiting another year before stopping because he worked hard on those).
The real surprise was how high in the rankings Lance had managed to bring himself up despite the fact he was struggling to memorize the controls by location. He knew the main buttons, at least, but there was always something to press or switch depending on the situation and he couldn't count on his ability to read a manual under the sea.
Aloud, he would commend his abilities to instinct, but the truth was that he was just doing enough trial and error to learn from it. Possibly everyone he told knew the truth and simply let him have the benefit of the doubt.
Still, it felt good to somewhat rival Keith Kogane after all.
He had to admit: Kogane was a natural (but could he swim 20 km an hour!? Well, Lance can't either, not anymore, but he used to! And he'd only been ten! Imagine how fast he'd be now if he could—no use in imagining the impossible, never mind.)
There was an instance in which Lance thought he should probably get some pointers. He wasn't stupid enough to hold a grudge as priority over a battleship.
There was having a rivalry with a dude he hadn't met and then there was meeting with his uncle—if being part of the Garrett family had done nothing but make Lance more and more human, it had at least granted him the same appreciation for family values he been given back in selkieland.
Lance thought he could get over himself and ask Kogane how he did it. He must have caught the guy at a bad time or something, because his attitude was total bull shark if you ask Lance.
As a matter of fact, Hunk did ask Lance how his first meeting with Keith Kogane went that evening. Great buddy, seriously, Lance wouldn't trade him for the world.
"Well," he began slowly, "I said 'hi,' like you told me to."
Hunk nodded approvingly. Lance's original greeting was a rather rude one.
"So," he prompted, leaning in, ready to hear the beginnings of a beautiful friendship.
"He walked away," Lance responded.
Hunk sunk a little. "He just...walked away? Lance, you know that he could've just had like a bad day or something," he jumped to defend the bull shark.
"Yeah, that's what I thought," Lance sighed. He was just a bit bitter that Hunk would be so compassionate to their (his) mortal enemy (there are better mortal enemies to have out there; starts with a G and almost rhymes with that cute girl in his mechanics class' name, Carla), but that was just his state of being. "So I tried again a while ago. He didn't have kind words."
Hunk frowned, but Lance refused to meet his eyes. "What do you mean?"
"I mean," and Lance was trying his hardest not to visibly grit his teeth because he is really trying to be a nice guy, "his day must've been real shitty because I'm not repeating any of our convo."
Lance didn't generally censor himself or anybody else. He liked shouting thing he shouldn't like shouting to the wind because it made Hunk's mom jump in her skin. It must have been rude.
"Who knew Keith would be so grouchy?" Hunk said. As much as Lance would love to take this opportunity to bring Hunk over to the dark (read: hate Keith Kogane) side, he was a bit more honest than that.
"No, I think he really was having a bad day. Like, bane of existence bad day, Hunk."
This got Hunk's attention. "What makes you say that?"
"He just looked like it," he said vaguely. Resentful. Intent on doing...something. Lance knew the feeling well. Kogane had lost something and he was going to get it back, no matter what.
He had a feeling it'd been stowing for a while now...
"Pidge was also pretty mad today," Hunk hummed in ponder. "You think it could be related?"
Lance jumped. "What? No way! Pidge hates Keith's guts just as much as I do!" He didn't. However, Lance had already skipped one opportunity to turn Hunk dark. He wasn't missing this one.
Hunk didn't believe a word he said.
3
Kogane dropped out of the Garrison, freeing up a spot for Lance and his crew to enter the elite squads. They were getting a battlesub.
It was a bittersweet victory for them.
When they heard the news, instead of celebrating immediately, Lance and Hunk had traded a look. While Hunk looked over at Pidge to poke at his reaction, Lance's glance strayed to the direction of the submarines in the ocean.
With the battlesub so nearly in his grasp, Lance realized a somewhat fatal flaw in his plan to steal a battlesub (he wasn't getting the Kraken, he was getting one Squidopulous).
1. Submarines were not meant to be manned alone.
2. Hunk and Pidge were not going to let Lance steal a submarine while they were on board.
3. Lance did not want to steal a submarine while Hunk and Pidge were on board.
Conflicted, one starry night, the young could-be-selkie escaped to the roof of the Garrison alone, where he could smell the sea salt, see the reflection in the sea, and think. It was so dark, he could almost convince himself he was underwater.
The door behind him opened and he turned to find Pidge carrying a bag, staring at him. He had never seemed nearly as entranced by Lance's eyes as most humans were. Lance suspected it was the glasses.
Eye to eye, still Pidge didn't move forward. Lance looked at his hands, which were reaching inside the bag. He really wanted to pry now. Damn, he should have brought Hunk.
Instead of being obvious, Lance smiled crookedly and patted the spot next to him. "We've known each other for how long? I'm not gonna kick you off the roof, Pidge."
The other boy grumbled half-heartedly and walked over. He plopped down and started setting up some...very fancy communication equipment. What was Pidge doing?
"You seemed busy," he muttered, glancing at Lance from behind his glasses.
"Brooding is not busy," Lance responded, poking a radar device suspiciously until the other swept his hands off. "Interrupt me anytime you see me brooding. It's not good for my health. Man, where's you get this stuff? Doesn't look like Garrison tech."
"I built it," Pidge said smugly. "With this thing, I can scan all the way to the edge of the solar system."
"The edge of the galaxy? What would you find out there?" He then added slyly, "I'm sure there's more interesting stuff under the sea. One missing Kerberos, perhaps?"
Pidge grumbled and looked away.
"So this is where you guys were!" He turned around to see Hunk poking his head out of the rooftop doorway. Like Lance and Pidge, he had left the garrison uniform behind and worn his casual clothing.
"Whoa," Lance cheered, "you snuck outta the barracks by choice!? Who are you and what have you done with Hunk Garrett?"
Pidge glanced behind him. "Oh, hey Hunk."
"Are you guys becoming best friends behind my back? Can I join in? We could be, like, the Garrison Three or something."
Lance pouted. "Pidge doesn't want to share his secret, we can't be best friends. Besides, you're already my best friend."
They grinned at each other, but Hunk sometimes had problems with priorities: On one hand, he loved Lance very much. On the other, he loved technology very much. On the third hand, he loved to touch other people's stuff.
Lance lost the battle for Hunk's heart very quickly. The other boy began messing around with Pidge's questionably suspicious tech, catching Pidge's glare.
"Don't touch that," he slapped Hunk's hand away.
It reminded Lance of the first time he'd met Hunk. And all of Hunk's cousins. And his cousins' children. The Garret fam couldn't keep their hands to themselves (It was why he was so good at hiding his own things around the house). The thought made him chuckle.
"And," Pidge continued, facing Lance again, "It's not a secret I want to hide."
"That's good, 'cause you aren't very good at it. You go ballistic every time one of the instructors brings it up. What's the deal?"
"Well- Second warning, Hunk," Pidge interrupted himself, eyeballing Hunk, who was touching an antenna. Hunk groaned.
"Come on, Pidge, just tell us already! We're a team. If we're gonna bond as one, we shouldn't keep any secrets." He narrowed his eyes and tried to look like a leader.
It didn't work, but Pidge fell for it all the same. "Fine," he said, not looking them in the eye. "But the world as you know it is about to change.
"The Kerberos Mission wasn't lost because of some malfunction or crew mista- STOP TOUCHING MY EQUIPMENT!" Pidge turned to yell at Hunk, whose red-hands were already reaching for the laptop.
Hunk groaned one final time and fell to his side, giving up and into his boredom.
"So I've been scanning the system and picking up chatter from the deep sea. It's weird—you would think scanning to the edge of the galaxy would be harder than scanning the Earth itself, but it's not. I had to enhance my tech. I couldn't even hear the fish at first after a certain point. It was like something was trying to hide under there."
Lance clacked his teeth, eyes widening just a bit. Pidge was...scanning territory that no human had ever been through. Territory no human was allowed into. He gulped.
"You believe me?" Pidge asked, taking in Lance's appearance.
"Wait," Hunk tuned into the conversation. "Are you telling me something's hiding from us under the sea?"
Pidge nodded. "It seems," he paused, choosing his words, "deeper than space. I don't understand how it hasn't been documented before. No matter how far I look for noise, I keep getting farther and farther. I was getting blocked at first, but I finally managed to get somewhere last month."
"That's insane," Lance said nervously. "There's no one down there."
"I'm serious!" Pidge picked up a notepad beside him. "They keep repeating one word. 'Voltron.' and tonight, it's going crazier than I have ever heard it.
Voltron is a fairy tale, he thought numbly.
"How—" Lance paled and stuttered, "how crazy?"
"ATTENTION STUDENTS. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. WE ARE ON LOCKDOWN. SECURITY SITUATION ZULU NINER. REPEAT: ALL STUDENTS ARE TO REMAIN IN BARRACKS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE."
Hunk looked around, searching for an intercom speaker to look at. "What's going on?"
Taking a step back, Lance grinned half-heartedly and pointed to the door. "We should-" go back inside.
"Is that a shark?" Hunk voiced over him, pointing at a disturbance in the water. Lance and Pidge turned, their breath catching.
It did look like a shark. A normal shark, and if they hadn't taken distance into consideration, all they would have asked themselves was how a shark had gotten so close to the base. Or how it was floating above water.
But they weren't blind.
"A very...very big shark," Hunk intoned. Pidge stared, affixing his glasses to better look at the distant...creature. He scavenged his bag and took out a pair of night vision binoculars.
"It's a ship," he said.
Lance grabbed the binoculars from his face, dragging Pidge along with, and took a look himself.
"Holy- That is not ours. That is-" a Galra ship. It looked weird, and he'd never seen one above water, but there was no mistaking Galra's signature fin.
(Galra never seemed to belong in the sea, they weren't very good or fast swimmers, all they could do was breath underwater, so having ships made sense for them)
But what did this mean? The Galra couldn't be planning to take over the land too, right?
"Impossible." Lance finished his line of thought aloud.
"I told you!"
"So wait." Hunk stared at the bull shark shaped ship wide-eyed. "There really was someone hiding under water? But no one's ever been that far down before. It's too deep, the pressure would kill them."
Not with the right technology. Not with the right companions, Lance thought. Anyone could get deep enough underwater, so long as they had a selkie's coat, or a mermaid's kiss, or something equivalent.
There were even items that could replicate the tools for as long as it was required before reaching the threshold separating the undersea and the oversea. The ultimate scuba diving gear.
But that stuff was illegal. Humans weren't allowed in the undersea. The trenches of deep dark abyss should have kept them out like the deepening pressure as the water approached Earth's core. (At some point, the water faded into vapor under the pressure. Past that was a wall, and through that was the undersea.)
"We've gotta see that ship!" Pidge exclaimed, equipment packed. He grabbed his bag and ran to the door. "It'll be easier to see on level ground."
Lance followed automatically.
"This is the worst team-building exercise ever," he heard Hunk say behind him.
"Oh no," Lance halted at the door. "You," he pointed at his brother, "are going back to the barracks. You're going to sleep and when morning comes, we're going to sneak out and eat breakfast at that place we went to last week!" He moved to leave, glancing at Hunk's stunned form one last time. "Go to sleep!"
Then he ran after Pidge. He couldn't stop the little guy from chasing after the Galra. That wasn't a choice he could make for him, but he wasn't going to let Hunk follow them into the undersea. Usually Hunk would beg to be left behind—Lance could give him that this time.
Outside the roof door, Hunk stared at the spot Lance had been in just seconds ago. Lance usually beckoned him to follow him into danger. They had gone exploring caves when they were too little. He had dared Hunk to touch a snake, not once but twice! Lance had even dragged him into a fight they had nothing to do with!
"I thought he would say 'come on,'" Hunk said to himself. He followed them all the same.
Later, Pidge and Lance found themselves behind a large rock on the beach shore. Pidge was scanning for any way to read the situation.
"I can't see anything but metal and water, even with these stupid binoculars. Got any X-ray glasses?" Lance complained under his breath.
Pidge said, "Obviously not."
"Aw man," a familiar voice replied behind them. "Guess there's nothing to do but head back to the barracks, right?"
"Hunk!" Lance almost shrieked, but Pidge reached up to shut his mouth shut with both his hands. He beckoned them to look back at the Garrison, where guards were already joining forces to ride a ship toward the UFO (unidentified floating object). Lance mumbled into his hands, glaring at Hunk.
"What was that?"
Lance swung Pidge's hands away and whisper-yelled, "I thought I told you to go back to sleep!"
"And leave you to get carried off by mermaids alone with Pidges?"
"Those aren't mermaids! Mermaids wouldn't-" He cut himself off. Sirens might, actually. That was the difference between sirens and mermaids, but it wasn't very clear at first glance. Although sirens could fly, their feathers were well hidden and—
Sirens haven't hunted humans in centuries, he reminded himself.
Pidge's headphones were skewed, having been pulled away from his work to silence Lance. He fixed them as he said, "Mermaids wouldn't need a ship to take them to the surface, Hunk. Now stop discussing mythological beings. It's much more likely that the people inside that shark ship are previous inhabitants of Atlantis."
Lance scoffed. Atlantis. Another fairy tale. Like the Castle of Dolphins. Or the Kingdom of Ys.
"That's just silly."
"Mermaids aren't real."
"This is going on too long," Lance intervened, not giving his own two cents on the matter. "You got something Pidge? Hunk, you can go back if you want."
"I followed you here, why would I go back?"
"Nothing. There's no cameras of anything, and all I can hear is someone breathing. Wait, they're talking."
"Can anybody hear me? Please," the voice begged in Pidge's ears. He frowned.
"He's trying to communicate," Pidge said
"We need to prepare, we need to find Voltron. Hello? Does anybody copy?"
"Voltron, he said Voltron!"
Lance and Hunk glanced at each other and then pressed their ears to Pidge's headphones, trying to make out anything they could.
"We need to hurry, we need to..." The voice weakened and stopped.
"I think he passed out. At least...I hope he passed out. We have to help him," Pidge looked into Lance's eyes and Lance nodded.
"Uh, I hate to be the voice of reason, always," Hunk muttered the last word under his breath, "but there's no way we are getting to that shark ship without a boat or a sub. Besides, the Garrison guards are probably gonna come in any second now to take a look."
"We could steal a sub," Lance suggested immediately, like he had thought of this before. Well, he had, but he didn't need them to know that.
"Or," Pidge remarked and grabbed his arm, turning him to look at the other side of the beach, where he pointed, "We could use that."
That was a guy dragging a speedboat across the sand. Lance recognized him immediately.
"No way," Lance grinded he teeth. "Oh, he is not going to beat us in there! That guy is always trying to one-up me!"
"Who is it?" asked Hunk.
"Keith!"
Pidge grabbed his bag as Hunk started to run after Lance. "Kogane?"
"Are you sure?"
"I'd recognize that mullet anywhere!"
They reached him before the boat was in the water. Immediately Lance started dragging the vessel from the other side, intent on beating Keith at it. "Nope. No you— No, no, no. No, you don't. I'm saving the guy in that ship."
Keith was masked, but his mullet was prominent as ever. His red jacket stood out again the sand, which was not what Lance would call sneaky, but so far he hadn't been caught, so there was that.
"Who are you?" Keith didn't let the strangers stop his line of action, especially seeing as the disagreeable teen was actually helping him despite his words.
"Who am I? Uh, the name's Lance." He blinked twice as Keith continued to stare at him face. "We were in the same class at the Garrison."
"Really? Are you an engineer?"
"No! I'm a pilot! We were, like, rivals. You know, Lance and Keith, neck and neck?"
Keith continued to look him in the eyes, unfazed. Huh.
"Oh wait," he recognized him as the ship splashed into the water. "I remember you! You're a research pilot."
"Well, not anymore," Lance looked at him bitterly. "I'm a fighter class now, thanks to you washing out."
"Well, congratulations." Keith responded in the same tone and turned away to start the engine and steer. Hunk and Pidge looked at each other and then at the other two before shrugging and getting on the boat with them.
"You guys wanna hitch a ride? Sure, go ahead, no need to ask," Keith said, rolling his eyes when the other three made themselves comfortable.
Behind them, the Garrison's vessels started to move forward.
"They are not going to be happy with us out here," Hunk vocalized. The engine was quiet, but the boat was not invisible, especially with four teenagers crowding it.
Keith grabbed a bag and threw it into his arms. "Here. Use these."
Hunk pulled out a sphere and looked over it curiously. "What am I doing here?"
"Throw it overboard. Aim away from us and the ship, it should keep them distracted."
Still dumbfounded, Hunk followed directions. The sphere stayed underwater for a second, long enough for Lance to say, "Hate to break it to ya, but nothing hap—", before the water's surface exploded.
"A bomb!?"
"It's not a bomb."
Pidge broke in, "It exploded. Ergo, a bomb. But it's probably designed to only explode underwater."
"Hey, I wanna try," Lance said with a grin, reaching into the bag and swiping a bomb. He threw it in the same direction as Hunk's, enjoying the wild waves and splashes it made.
It worked. The Garrison guards took a detour toward the explosions, putting off the search on the UFO. Their boat went unnoticed.
...
"Shiro," Keith breathed a sigh of relief when he turned the body over and checked his breath. Shirogane was, in fact, passed out.
"Shiro? Whoa, the dude from the Kerberos misson? That guy's my hero," Lance exclaimed, helping Keith by putting one of Shiro's arms over his shoulder. "I thought he was missing."
He was found, now. A scar on his face told Lance it hadn't been easy.
"Everyone did," Pidge said. "I told you!"
"Chill. I never said I didn't believe you," Lance said, having a hard time expressing himself without the ability to put him hands forward to calm down his crewmate. He tried shrugging and stopped when Shiro started slipping off him.
"Will you guys hurry up?" Hunk's upside down head poked out from the hatch. The fin was visible behind him, but mostly, Lance saw night and Hunk.
"We need you to grab him. Glasses, bring the ladder down will you?"
"Wait," Pidge said as he did so, "Is the boat going to hold all of us?"
Keith gave him a look. "No."
Didn't mean they couldn't all get on it. They managed to stow away into the night without even a chase scene. Lance almost felt disappointed.
I am not confident in my action writing skills. Though I did miss the chance to reintroduce Keith Kogane as cool rather than just temperamental. Huh. Damn, my bad.