"So this is exciting," Lance said to Blue as he made himself at home in her cockpit. She purred in response. "Our first real rescue mission. The last one didn't count. We're totally gonna kick butt out there."
As he prepped for launch, he turned on his comm-links to the other paladins. "You think the Balmerans will throw a parade for us after we free them from the Galra?"
"It's not about the glory, Lance," said Keith, who, clearly, did not know what a joke was. "It's about freeing prisoners from Zarkon."
"No, I know," said Lance, rolling his eyes. "But still – when they–"
Blue decided to prevent him from digging himself into a deeper hole by taking off at that moment and cutting off his words. That was probably a good thing.
And, of course, the second they broke cloud cover, they were being shot at.
Wonderful.
"Alright, guys, this is it. Get your heads in the game," said Shiro. Lance heard Keith immediately start mumbling High School Musical lyrics, and his opinion of the Red Paladin shot skyward. "Keith."
"Sorry," said Keith. He sounded completely unrepentant. Lance respected that.
"Remember," said Shiro. "The Balmera is a living creature. Pinpoint the Galra installations but be sure not to hit the surface."
"Roger that, Space Dad," said Lance.
Shiro groaned. Lance grinned.
"Yeah, Space Dad, roger that," echoed Keith. Lance sent Keith a mental high-five, then wondered if he'd be able to send him a mental high-five for real through the Lions – then a shot nearly grazed Blue and he decided he needed to pay attention.
"Sorry, beautiful," he murmured to her. Blue sent him something along the lines of, "it's okay," and he felt a bit better.
It was actually going pretty well. A few well-placed tail-lasers took out several of the rigs – Lance was always pleased to show off his shooting skills, and of course working together with Blue the two of them were just as good as he was with a gun. Hunk, it seemed, favoured a more hands-on approach, and by hands-on, Lance meant ramming the things.
"You know, this is actually kind of fun," said Hunk in a private line to Lance, bright grin on his face. "There's something just really satisfying about ramming into and destroying the hard work of the bad guys, you know?"
"You're just trying to impress Shay," teased Lance.
"I am not!" Hunk protested.
"I guess you're right," Lance conceded. "It is pretty satisfying to mess up all this Galran stuff. Bet I can destroy more than you."
"You're on!" Hunk agreed.
Blue sent Lance feelings of amusement, but Lance knew she was just as competitive as he was, especially because she was now literally keeping score on a screen next to Hunk's video feed.
They were winning, by the way.
Keith then chose to interrupt their competition. "Woah! Did you guys just see that?"
"Uh, no, sorry," admitted Hunk.
"Red has firepower!" he exclaimed, a giddiness unlike Keith slipping into his voice. "Like, an actual flamethrower!"
"That sounds so cool," Lance whined.
Blue seemed indignant, clearly insisting that water was way better than fire, and water could put out fire, so there. They were cooler.
Yeah, Lance could accept that argument.
Lance and Hunk flew over to join Keith – sure enough, one of the Galra installations had a huge hole melted out of it. Lance was begrudgingly impressed.
"Oh, no," muttered Shiro. "Why would they give you fire?"
"Oh, shut up, Shiro," shot back Keith. "Huh – uh-oh."
Hunk was the first to react as the installation began to fall, he and Yellow catching it. "Hey, hey, be more careful! We don't want to hurt the Balmera!"
Blue mentally nudged him, very, very smug.
"I think Blue knows what to do!" Lance said for the other's sake. He followed her instructions to hit the button she'd lit up, and then she was shooting ice at the falling installation. Yellow moved out of the way as the installation was frozen in place. Blue sent him something that felt a lot like, "I told you so."
"Nice job, Lance," said Shiro. Lance beamed at the praise. "Alright, team. Let's go in and hope our good luck holds."
Lance and Keith split off from the group to land in the tunnel they were told to land in. Lance wasn't sure how he felt about being paired with Keith. On one hand, they were rivals. On the other hand, Keith liked High School Musical, so he couldn't be that bad.
He climbed into the Blue Lion's speeder and dropped into the tunnel himself. As soon as he was clear, Blue put up her particle barrier – besides her, red was doing the same. Keith didn't wait for Lance, instead speeding down the tunnel and leaving Lance to follow. They had a map to follow, courtesy Pidge and Coran. From what Lance knew, they were supposed to close up the hangar and prevent the Galra from having any air support.
The Balmera was really pretty on the inside, crystals dotting the walls like something out of a fantasy novel. Lance would have loved to visit – you know, sometime when they weren't on a pretty high-stakes rescue mission like they were now. They pulled up behind an outcropping of rock and slid down to observe the hangar.
It was completely full. If Lance hadn't thought it was kind of weird that there hadn't been any enemies in the air earlier, he definitely did now. Why would every single ship be grounded when they were clearly under attack?
"The entire hangar is guarded by a few sentries?" muttered Keith in disbelief. Lance was ready to start hashing out a plan when Keith drew his bayard and started to charge out. "Let's go."
"Woah, woah, woah, Keith, my buddy, my man," said Lance, pulling the Red Paladin back. "The Balmera is a sensitive living being, remember?"
Keith blinked at him. "Oh. Right."
"Yeah," said Lance, raising an eyebrow. "We can't start blowing things up like a psycho."
Keith scowled. "Got a better idea?"
Lance glanced back into and around the hangar, He caught sight of the control room and grinned. "I do indeed. We sneak into the control room and shut down the bay doors so the ships can't leave."
"That–" Keith started to protest. He stopped, blinked in surprise, and deflated. "–actually is a better plan"
Lance huffed. "No need to sound so surprised."
"I'm not surprised!" protested Keith. "I'm just… surprised."
Lance stared at him. His cheeks darkened.
"Yeah, alright," said Lance. "Let's go."
They crept along the bar-thing (did it have a name? Lance certainly didn't know it) to the control room. Lance was actually surprised at how easy it was to reach it.
"How do we get in?" asked Keith in a whisper.
Lance gestured with his bayard in a circle around the roof. Keith stared at him, and he sighed. "Cut a hole with your sword, dude."
Keith's eyes lit up in understanding and he did as Lance asked. Then, once that was done and it didn't fall in, Lance stood and jumped on it, successfully getting them in and knocking out the sentry. Keith hopped in after him.
"I'm going to see if I can get these doors shut," Lance said. "Stand guard."
Keith nodded.
Unfortunately for Lance, all the controls were in Galran, which he did not understand. At least Altean looked halfway familiar, like something he'd learned a long time ago but had largely forgotten. Given how into sci-fi Lance had always been, he wouldn't be shocked if it resembled one of the languages from a show or something he used to like.
The best bet was probably the big red handprint. Problem: it could be DNA-activated. Lance was not Galra-DNA as far as he knew. He pressed a few buttons. Nothing happened. He huffed, and reluctantly tried putting a hand on the screen. An alert popped up (luckily no alarms) with what he presumed to be all-caps screaming about human invaders. Lance quickly closed it, grimacing.
"I don't know what I'm doing," he admitted. Keith walked over and glared at it, before putting his hand on the handprint. "Wait, it's no–"
There was a happy little beep and the hangar doors began closing.
Lance blinked. "Huh. It didn't do anything for me."
"Maybe it only likes Koreans?" said Keith helplessly.
That answer made so little sense that Lance snorted. "Yeah, okay, more reason to not like Galra, their tech doesn't like Cubans."
Not that Lance was sure he was genetically Cuban, but, hey, he was Cuban in heart and mind, so that counted for something.
He knew that wasn't the answer. Either there was something weird about Keith that let him unlock this thing, or there was something weird about Lance that stopped him.
Unfortunately, he'd put his money on himself being the weird one. After all, Keith at least knew his parents, right? For all Lance knew, he was part-alien or something!
That was impossible, of course.
Well, it was very unlikely.
He'd know if he was part-alien.
Maybe Keith was part-alien. It could have been how he found the Blue Lion and how he made the screen work. It didn't like Koreans, it liked whatever alien Keith was part. Er, whatever.
Keith nudged him. "You alright? You look like you're thinking too hard. Don't hurt yourself."
"You know your parents, right?" blurted Lance.
Keith stiffened and looked away. "I knew my dad."
"But… not your mom?" asked Lance unsurely.
"She left when I was a baby," Keith admitted. His face had fallen into a deep frown.
Lance put a hand on his shoulder. "Hey, man, I get it. I lost my birth parents when I was like four. Never knew what happened to them, if they died or if they abandoned me. So I kind of know how it feels."
"Huh," said Keith in surprise. "I guess we're both misfit orphans in space, then."
Lance laughed despite himself. "We could make it a TV show."
Keith smiled softly. "Yeah. Guess we could."
Suddenly, Shiro's voice filtered over the comms: "Lance, Keith, get to the core. We're going in for a firefight and we're going to need all the help we can get."
"Copy that," said Lance. "We're on our way."
Keith slashed through the controls with his sword to ensure they couldn't undo the closing of the bay doors. On their way out, Lance shot what he assumed was the lock of sorts. Then he and Keith took off on foot towards the core.
As they were running, Pidge announced, "Guys, be careful. The Balmera is very unstable."
And of course it would be then that they ran into a bunch of sentries who promptly started shooting at them.
"Quiznak!" Lance yelped as he and Keith dove to the side.
"They're hurting the Balmera!" exclaimed Keith.
"We can't shoot back, we'll make it worse," said Lance.
Keith drew his bayard. "I have a sword, I can–"
"Keith, if you go out there right now you'll come back looking like Swiss cheese!" Lance said. He looked around quickly. There was a ladder behind Keith that led into another passage way. Lance smiled and gestured to Keith, then the ladder, then to himself and the sentries.
Keith, the oblivious boy who he'd clearly need to work with later, stared at him blankly. He looked around, caught sight of the ladder, and grinned and gestured to it before climbing up. Lance sighed and hopped out of hiding.
"Hey, betcha can't hit me!" Lance shouted, before quickly summoning his shield and ducking behind in. Keith descended from above with a grin and a drawn sword and made quick work of the sentries. Lance gave him a thumbs-up. That gesture he at least got, and the wide smile he gave Lance made it very hard to stay any amount of angry.
How could he? Keith looked like a puppy!
"Alright," said Keith. "Let's keep going. We don't want to leave the others waiting."
"Yeah," agreed Lance. "Let's go."
A/N: Look at Lance, who honestly isn't going to put two and two together with this but at least the suspicion is there in his head for both him and Keith! Also, my boys are bonding, yay! Poor Keith can't understand Lance's gestures to save his life.
This was pretty fun to write, as usual, because Lance is pretty fun to write. I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter!