We had a reason that day.
(Hunk)
Hunk didn't think there could be anything worse than getting caught in the middle of doing something stupid and being sent to the principal's office, but there was - and that was getting caught and being sent to the principal's office after you thought you had gotten away with doing something stupid.
As usual, he blamed Lance. He blamed Lance inwardly because even though he really, really, really wanted to give Lance a piece of his mind right now, it was bad form to do so in front of authority figures. Lance being to blame or not, they were in the same boat right now. If there was anything he picked up from his classes in strategy it was that when you were facing an opposing force, your team had to present a strong, united front otherwise things would go to shit for everyone very, very quickly.
Which was why when Pidge was about to say something, Hunk interrupted as loudly as he could.
"W-we had a very good reason for being at the city in the middle of curfew!" His mind raced through ideas as he felt the sweat beading at his temple.
Pidge was frowning at him for the interruption but chose to take a step back in the conversation, which was a relief. Hunk didn't have a fully formed opinion yet on the third member of their team. The three of them had only been a "team" for a few weeks and the only thing he'd picked up on thus far was that Pidge was... private. Friendly in a general manner - and a reliable group member for the most part - but the kid tended to beg off of any after-class activities once official class times were over. Whether this was because of shyness or wariness or just a natural tendency for being a loner, Hunk didn't know yet and he was fine with it, really. Pidge would warm up to them eventually because they were pretty much spending all of their class times together anyway - but Lance? Lance had (generally, usually) good intentions, but he was also impatient. Lance tended to want things when he wanted them and not before or after otherwise it didn't make sense to him. That part about Lance was a Problem.
This moment right here was the direct result of Lance being impatient and Hunk just wanted to murder him - but that could be done later. Not now. Now he had to do damage control.
"It was, uh... It was... for a..." Hunk's eyes darted from object to object in the room, before they rested on a bunch of battered-looking files on the Principal's table. "We were... doing a thing - project! We were doing a project. For class."
"A project," Commander Iverson repeated, and even though the tough old codger's face was a brewing storm held at bay by the thinnest string of patience, Hunk nodded and put as much earnestness as he could manage into his performance.
"Extra credit, sir," he said with more confidence. "More of a case study, actually. We wanted to prove that the, uhhhh - ummmm - system - yes, a system. It's a system that we developed. We wanted to prove that it's more efficient than... than the ones we use here at the Garrison. Cause, you know, we think ours is better - not that Garrison tech is bad, sir! No! Nononono no, Garrison tech is top notch stuff! It's just, like, um. Ours. W-we put a lot of neat stuff into it?"
Iverson had been in a relatively stable state of skepticism up until halfway through Hunk's explanation. The impatience simmered again over the stuttering and the vague fillers.
"What are you talking about, boy?"
Anyone could tell that he was at the brink of an explosion.
So of course this was the moment Lance chose to intervene.
"Oh you know," the pilot-in-training said in a voice that was as smooth as silk but only half as classy. His stance was confident even though Hunk knew he was pulling this all from out of his ass. In situations where Hunk wouldn't have dared to jump in, Lance barreled straight through. "We're talking about that outdated, unserviced heap of junk that you call a flight simulator."
"Excuse me? "
Hunk ripped his eyes away from Iverson's rapidly purpling face when he was absolutely certain that the senior officer's attention was 100% focused on Lance. He saw that Lance was calm, smug even, and that was usually reassuring in life-or-death situations, but right now Hunk was too busy trying to prevent the full weight of the law from slamming onto their shoulders - something that Lance seemed to not get.
What are you doing?! Hunk mouthed when he managed to get the pilot's attention.
Lance flapped a dismissive hand back at him. I got this, it meant - but Hunk vehemently disagreed.
"All the instruments in that thing are ancient. How'd you expect us to compete with cadets from other schools?" Lance continued with a dismissive handwave. "We get that garrison funding has to go elsewhere so we thought - hey! Why not solve our own problem? We're sure as hell smart enough to."
"So you - what?" The threat of an explosion had simmered down but Iverson's patience was still thinning with every word, "Made yourselves a new flight simulator, did we?"
"If we had at least two years, sure," Pidge spoke up, head tilting in a way that made Hunk blink. Pidge was calm too - but not like Lance with his overabundance of confidence. Pidge was rational calm. Sensible calm. A kind of calm that was remotely believable. "We wanted something we could finish now though, so we just improved the nav panel. That's what we were testing out in the city - "
"But after hours, Gunderson?" Apparently Iverson was impervious to this type of calm. "These excuses keep getting flimsier and flimsier - "
"We needed somewhere densely populated to test, sir," Pidge pressed on.
"Then why not the dorms? High body count, located within school grounds too. None of you geniuses thought of that? And, what, a night club was the obvious choice? Spare me." Iverson began to write something into the clipboard tilted over his lap. Hunk didn't like the focused way the senior officer seemed to be slashing his Ts and puncturing his Is.
"Sir - " he began, and his thoughts scattered over the scathing look that the Commander directed at him.
"That's enough out of you." The Commander's tone was deceptively calm again. His head moved just the slightest bit to capture all of them under a withering glare. "That's enough out of all of you. You're all spending a month of your freetime on cleaning duty for that damn flight sim you're so stuck on "improving". Maybe the added intimacy will be just what you sods need to perfect your little project. DISMISSED."
One would have been hard-pressed to find a more dispirited round of "Yessir"s. The three of them found their way back to their bunk, which was the only safe haven any student had in the Garrison. The heavy silence that had accompanied them since their sentencing was dispelled by a sigh from Lance.
"Well this sucks," he began - and all the pent up emotion that Hunk had held in just ignited. Hunk balled his hands into fists as words exploded out of his mouth.
"Oh shut up, Lance! I don't want to sound like a five year old but THIS WAS ALL. YOUR. FAULT!"
"Excuse me?!" Lance had the nerve to sound affronted.
"You heard me!" Hunk got up from his bunk to face the pilot. "Let's go out to the city tonight, guys! We totally won't get caught or anything!" he said in falsetto, eyes going sharp when he finished. "Well guess what, Lance? We got caught! We're getting punished for it! I bet it'll even go on our permanent records or something!"
"Probably not," Pidge interjected. " It's more of a minor disciplinary issue than anything- "
"Not the point!" He punctuated the phrase with a stomp and Pidge's eye level dropped away with a muttered "Okaaaay" before sinking completely behind a laptop screen.
Hunk's temper deflated soon after because he wasn't built for sustained negativity (and throwing a tantrum was pretty embarrassing no matter what the circumstances were). Mid-rant he'd noticed that Lance had finally adopted some semblance of guilt for his actions; he was slumped where he sat and staring at his shoes, sullen and quiet. Hunk sighed.
"I just... didn't want to get into trouble, okay?" he began more calmly, one hand reaching for the back of his neck. "We could have visited the city over the weekend. I... actually, I have no idea why I even agreed to go with you guys. Did we even have a reason or...?"
Pidge sighed over the clacking of fingers gliding over a keyboard. "Someone told flyboy here that he didn't have the balls to sneak past security. I wanted to go because there was a one-day sale I wanted to take advantage of. And you..." A small, considering wrinkle appeared between the round glasses that reflected a glowing computer screen. "As usual, you tagged along because you wanted to make sure we got back in one piece."
Lance grumbled to himself, shifting in his seat. "Dumbasses were pegging me as the guy who's only good on the combat sims. It was a matter of pride. "
"They're just mad 'cause you smoke them at every practice session," Pidge soothed.
"I know right? Had to shut them up."
"Wait wait wait." Hunk frowned. "So if the point of this whole thing was just to get past the security bots... Why the night club?"
Lance waggled an eyebrow at him. "Why not the night club?"
Hunk stared at his friend, taking in his smarmy grin. He thought back to that evening and most of his memories were colored in bright shades of pink and purple. That was his first time at a night club.
"It just cost us a month of free time," he mused.
"So, worth it?"
Hunk went back to the pink and purple lights. Then he winced as the more recent memories in Iverson's office pierced through them. "No idea. Ask me again after a month."
"What about after less than a month?" asked Pidge. The typing had stopped before either of them realized it, and the shortest member of the group was now looking up at them.
Pidge rarely grinned like that so it was taking a while for Hunk to get used to it. Lance, recognizing a kindred spirit, leaned forward conspiratorially. "What're you scheming, Ace?"
With theatrical care, Pidge turned the laptop screen around so that they could see what was on it. It was a clutter of windows, most full of code that was well beyond Hunk's grasp.
"Okay, cool," Lance said slowly as Hunk's eyes drifted over to a window with what appeared to be schematics, "but some of us don't speak computer as good as you. Translate?"
At around the same time, Hunk's eyes widened as he realized what he was staring at. "The code is way over my head too, but these designs... Gunderson, is this what I think it is?"
Instead of replying, a giddy Pidge turned to Lance. "Do you remember that thing you said about the flight sim being crappy?"
"Back at Iverson's office? Sure... oh." Lance's frown eased into a cross between surprised and impressed. "No way. Don't tell me this is..."
"Yep." Pidge tapped the screen. "All your stupid showboating reminded me of this old project I was working on with my brother. Never finished it but I have enough to work out some kind of prototype for our "extra credit assignment". I'm gonna need some help with the hardware though -"
"Ooh! Me! I can help!" Hunk exclaimed, as the drawings on screen caused ideas to bloom in his imagination. "Your schematics are a little crude but I've worked with worse. I might wanna tweak it a little here and there, y'know, to optimize it and stuff? That okay?"
"That's more than okay, big guy. I was counting on it," Pidge reassured.
"What about me?" Lance cut in, not about to be left out. "I wanna help."
"You have the most flight experience out of all of us, McClain, so you're on troubleshooting duty."
"Awyeah!" he crowed, throwing a few victory punches into the air. "Hey how mad do you think Iverson will be when he realizes that our bullshit story's not bullshit at all?"
"Super nova mad. But he'll have to pretend he's not because, you know, propriety." Hunk, initially grinning, sagged a little. "No guarantee we'll get some days shaved off our sentence though. I mean, he knows it was a bullshit excuse. He knows that we know it was a bullshit excuse. It 100% is and always will be a bullshit excuse."
Pidge shrugged and turned the laptop back around to continue typing. "That's true, but Lance was right about the flight sim. Really outdated. We'll be doing a service if we can get the ball rolling on updating it."
"Also more importantly, we'll be stickin' it to Iverson," added Lance, nudging himself over to where Pidge was sitting. "Hey, do we have a timeline for this thing?"
"I think we can get something together in a couple of days. I wanna build the prototype as fast as possible so... we're gonna need parts."
Hunk nodded absently, half listening to them, half listening to the ideas in his head as they wandered off into tangents about the schematics from Pidge's computer. Parts, huh? They could raid the junk from the shop class and pawn a chipset or two from the guys over at the tech department. There were some parts that couldn't simply be foraged for, though. So that meant they had to buy them.
He blinked and inhaled sharply.
Pidge, avoiding his eye, said casually: "You know, I think that store I went to extended their sale period - "
"We are not sneaking out again. No. Nu-uh."
"But Hunk -"
"No."
