"I'd like to preface this with: it was not my fault," Lance said as Alfor's AI came to life. The Altean raised an eyebrow, clearly amused.

"Hello to you too, Lance," he said.

"I am completely and totally a victim of the whole thing," Lance continued. He was pretty sure he and Alfor were chill enough by now that he could just start conversations like this. By the laughter in the AI's eyes, he was probably right.

"Oh?" said Alfor. "And what is the whole thing?"

"So, we stopped to help out these people who were stranded – both of them very, very attractive mind you," said Lance. "Hunk's super not pleased, because it means we won't reach the Balmera until tomorrow, not that it's easy to tell tomorrow in space. Anyway, so I was trying to be nice, and I gave the pretty girl a tour of the Castle. And then she wanted a ride on Blue, and we stopped at this spring and – well, and then she handcuffed me to a tree."

"Oh, dear," said Alfor.

"Yeah, and she threatened me to get Blue to cooperate, and I was stuck there for forever," complained Lance. "We did get Blue back, don't worry. But Keith won't drop it!"

"If it helps," offered Alfor sheepishly, "you're not the only one to have fallen for an attractive face."

Lance stared at him for a second, then covered his mouth to prevent a laugh from escaping. "No way. You?"

"I was young!" Alfor protested. "But you can ask Coran for that story. Believe me, he loves to tell it."

"Oh, I will," said Lance. He paused. "Speaking of Coran, has he come by yet?"

Alfor's momentary silence and brief frown were all the answer Lance needed.

"Okay!" said Lance, not giving the dead king a chance to respond. "I'll be right back. You wait here! Or – uh, I guess there isn't much else you can do. Be right back!"

He ran out of the AI room before Alfor could say a word. Coran needed to talk to his old friend, if only for some form of closure, and AI or not, Alfor seemed to want to talk to Coran. It was the least Lance could do to make sure it happened.

He found Coran's room pretty easily. The man wasn't asleep yet, luckily, and he looked up from whatever he was reading as Lance entered. His expression turned soft.

"Hello, Lance," he said. "Do you need anything?"

"You said you'd talk to Alfor after the party," Lance said. "Well, it's after the party! So we're going to talk to Alfor."

Coran looked stunned. "We are?"

"Come on, Coran," said Lance. "Please? It'll be good for both of you."

For good measure, he unleashed his ojos de cachorro. Ricky was actually better at the puppy-dog eyes than he was, but he was pretty good, and he had a good feeling it would work on Coran.

Coran sighed. "Fine. We're going to talk to Alfor."

"Alright!" cheered Lance.

Coran chuckled fondly and set his book aside. He stood and Lance went ahead and started walking back towards the AI room; Coran fell into step beside him.

"By the way," he said, "Alfor told me to ask you for the story about him falling for an attractive face and getting into trouble."

"Did he now?" said Coran. "Usually he would avoid those at all costs."

"Those?" Lance repeated, latching onto the very best part of the statement, which would of course be the part that implied there were multiple stories. Coran's wide, mischievous smile told Lance all he needed to know. "Okay, I'm going to have to hear these."

"Before he met Allura's mother, Alfor was a disaster when it came to romance," said Coran. "Not that he was any good once he met Fala, mind you, but she at least put up with his sad attempts."

"I think I would pay to see this," said Lance.

"Don't worry about that," said Coran, giving him a conspiratorial smile. "I caught some on video when we were younger."

Lance laughed loudly, and Coran shushed him quickly. Lance realised belatedly the others were probably asleep. They continued the rest of the way to the AI room in mostly silence. Lance hoped he was doing the right thing – he hadn't thought about it before, but he supposed by making Coran meet with the AI of his old friend he could make the grief worse.

"If you really don't want to do this," said Lance hesitantly.

"I'll stop you there, my boy," said Coran softly. "I do want to see Alfor again. I just needed some prompting."

Lance nodded. They had reached the AI room again. Lance walked in first, and the room lit up again with the flowers and beauty of Altea. Coran entered behind him, looking around with a sad sort of smile on his face.

"Coran," said Alfor, clearly mildly surprised even though he had to have known that Lance was going to get the man. 'It is… good to see you."

"Alfor, my friend," said Coran softly. "I've missed you."

Lance glanced between them and smiled. "I'll leave you guys alone to talk."

He started to leave, content to let the two old friends catch up. He was stopped at the doorway by Coran's voice. "Lance."

Lance looked back at them.

"Thank you," said Coran.

"Anytime," said Lance in response, before finally leaving the room. He needed to catch up on sleep – tomorrow was probably going to be a lot of work. After all, freeing an entire planet wouldn't be easy.

Morning came far sooner than Lance would have hoped. All of them gathered in the dining room to eat breakfast before reaching the Balmera. Lance, with his full bowl of the green food goo that had surprisingly begun to grow on him (especially now that Hunk was sneaking in that spice he'd found), sat next to Coran.

"Good talk last night?" he asked.

Coran smiled softly. "Indeed, though I admit to being a bit tired this morning."

"Guess you had a lot to talk about," said Lance. "I always lose track of time in there."

"When we were boys, Alfor and I would camp out in hidden corners of the castle and stay up all night to talk," said Coran fondly. "Dodging everyone else awake was always a welcome challenge."

"My siblings and I used to do that sometimes," said Lance. "Me and Leida most of all. I wasn't that old when Javier and Maria both got all responsible on us, but Leida is only like two years older than me. He's the only one that doesn't really remember a time before me, you know? I sometimes think that's why we're the closest. Well, not that Javier and Maria and I aren't close, we really are – I'm rambling, sorry."

"Nonsense," said Coran amusedly. "I enjoy hearing about your family on Earth."

"You'll have to meet them one day," Lance said. "They'll love you."

"Perhaps I will, someday," said Coran. "I look forward to it."

Lance hesitated a moment. "Well, and – if you ever want to talk more about your family, I'd love to listen."

Coran's amusement softened. "Thank you, Lance. I may take you up on that offer. There are many tales of Alaea I want to tell you."

Lance felt kind of bad about the sadness in the older man's eyes, but Coran seemed glad that Lance had offered to listen. He wondered why Coran hadn't mentioned his son – Lance liked little kids and stories of little kids.

Speaking of – next time he visited Alfor he was so asking for baby stories about Allura.

Once all of them finished breakfast – even a nervous Hunk, which took some prodding because he knew better than anyone that all the excitement might make his stomach upset – they headed to the control room.

"We'll be arriving at the Balmera soon," said Allura as they walked in. Coran made his way to the main control station, or whatever. "Freeing the Balmerans from Zarkon's grasp is not going to be easy."

"So what is the plan?" asked Lance. "Just go in and – pow, pow, pow! – free the prisoners?"

Keith gave him an unimpressed look. "What was that noise?"

Lance grinned at him. "Laser guns."

"No, Lance," said Hunk to Lance's complete lack of surprise. The sound of laser guns was an age-old argument in their friendship, one they could never truly resolve but kept bringing back up. "I think you mean – byow, byow, byow – vooom – pyew!"

Lance continued to be utterly unimpressed by his best friend's so-called laser gun sounds.

"That sounds like fireworks," Lance said, like he always did.

"You know, technically," said Pidge, "they're more like – ba-choo, ba-choo, ba-choo!"

Okay, that was just offensive if you asked Lance.

"Okay, enough with the bad sound effects," said Shiro, and Lance almost thanked him for his timely intervention until he continued. "Besides, it's more like – blam, blam, blam!"

Keith too looked offended by this, though Lance wasn't sure if it was at the blasphemously awful laser gun sounds or the fact that Shiro was joining in at all. "What?"

"You're crazy," said Pidge.

"No way," Lance agreed.

"Yeah, wrong," said Hunk.

"Paladins, focus!" Allura exclaimed.

Hunk snapped out of it the quickest, probably because he was so invested in the mission. "She's right. Anyway, we can't just shoot up the Galra. The Balmera is alive, and from what we've seen… well, it's not doing too good."

Coran pulled up a heat scan of the planet-creature. Lance didn't understand heat scans, so he couldn't do anything but take their word for it not doing too good.

"Yes," said Coran solemnly. "It's an atrocity, what the Galra have been doing to this grand creature. Stealing its crystals, its very life force, without ever performing the energy rejuvenating rituals in order to heal it. They're killing it."

"Seeing Shay's people enslaved like this – it made me realise just how bad Zarkon really is," said Hunk. Lance, in the back of his mind, wondered why this had been what tipped him off and not the fact that, oh, Zarkon had almost completely wiped out the Altean race in a genocide the likes of which they'd never even considered a possibility on Earth. A whole planet, purposefully destroyed and all its people, good people like Alfor, murdered? That was a level of evil Lance just couldn't comprehend. Hunk, unaware of Lance's thoughts, continued. "We're the only ones who can stop him."

"Okay," said Shiro. "So we can't go into the tunnels guns blazing. Plan B, then. We draw the Galra up to the surface."

"Idea!" said Hunk. "If we attack all the mining stuff, the troops will have to come to defend it! Then we beat them up, head into the tunnels, and yay! Voltron saves the day."

"But how do we know if all the troops left the tunnels?" asked Keith.

Allura brightened. "We can track the Galra and the Balmerans using Biothermal Life Indicator Point Technology."

Pidge's eyes lit up like it was Christmas. "BLIP tech!"

Allura stared at her.

"It's an acronym," she offered.

"Alright," said Allura unsurely, before shaking her head. "One of you will need to fly around the Balmera and drop sensors into the shafts. Then we'll be able to see where the Galra and Balmerans are. There are also sensors built into your suits.'

"Well, I can do that," said Pidge. "I just modified the Green Lion with the invisible maze's cloaking tech. I should be able to fly around unnoticed."

Lance worried for a half a moment that Allura might be upset by this, but she nodded.

"Here is their main power generator," said Coran, zooming in on the scary glowing generator. "Take this down, and you'll severely weaken their defences."

"We will stay in cloud cover and give you tactical support," said Allura. "With the defences weakened from Sendak's crystal, we won't be of much help to you."

"I'll take out the power generator," said Shiro. "Keith, Lance, Hunk, you take out the big mining rigs."

"Yeah!" exclaimed Hunk excitedly. "Let's do this! Let's go kick some purple alien ass – I mean butt! Sorry, Pidge, forgot you're here."

Pidge scowled and looked very prepared to demonstrate just how little her vocabulary needed to be expanded (and Lance didn't doubt that the little gremlin had the mouth of a sailor), but Shiro cut in. "Alright, everyone. Let's go."

A/N: This chapter was a lot of fun to write, so I hope you guys enjoyed it! The gun sounds scene is one of my favourites, to be honest, so writing it was a blast (get it? a blast? because laser guns? yeah?). Also, there was a bit of research. I don't speak Spanish, so someone please correct me if the translation of puppy-dog eyes is wrong. By the way, with Lance's siblings' names, I know we have canon ones now, but editing chapters on here is a lot so they're just gonna stay as they are.

You might be disappointed that you didn't get to see more of the Alfor and Coran reunion but, honestly, I didn't think Lance would stick around. Also, my poor shipper heart agonised over how to make this not high-key Alforan so Lance leaving worked out well for me.

Hope you all enjoyed! We're sadly back to the iffy update schedule now, so sorry about that. I'll try to have the next chapter up soon, but with my internship and all, I can't be sure. Love you guys!