By the time they stood within the walls of the Castle of Lions, the tension had already hit a fever pitch. No matter how hard they tried, the monsters that clutched to Pidge and Hunk's faces couldn't be pulled off. Shiro grabbed it with his metallic arm, shimmering under the sterilised light of the medical room, and yet the creature simply wove its long tail tighter around Hunk's neck.
There wasn't any time to breathe. There hadn't been a single moment, any one second to think rationally. There was only Pidge and Hunk, near-death on an operating table.

Keith's eyes welled and ebbed, the glistening whites of all of Voltron's Paladins shaking as they looked on, powerless.

"We have to try cutting it."
Lance's eyes widened further, pupils shaking in their sockets.
"What are you, insane? We can't just cut straight through and hope for the best. I mean, there's a person under there! There's Hunk, th-there's Pidge there!"
"We can't leave them like this."
"That's… I…"
Shiro placed a heavy arm on Lance's shoulder.
"I think it's a risk too, but… Keith is right. I'm sorry, Lance, but that thing around their necks… They'll die of we don't help them here."
Shiro's deep brown eyes stared to the floor, darting upwards to Keith activating his Bayard. A white-and-red sword materialised before a blue light, pulsing into life before them.
"Start at the… fingers."
Allura and Coran burst through the slide-opening doors suddenly, horror writ cleanly on their faces.
Allura spoke first, for once.
"This is ridiculous! You're in a medical bay, about to work on two of your closest friends, and you use a sword?"
She extended her hand outwards, a wide array of holographic displays lighting the room even brighter.
Elegant, bone-white shapes descended from the ceiling of the room, a tiny, cylindrical laser in the centre. With a few sharp, purposeful movements, Allura's gestures seemingly willed the machinery downwards, perfectly positioned around Hunk's head.

It started slicing at the first joint, just inches away from Hunk's head. The soft drone of the red, surgical beam echoed around the chamber, searing away the creature's fingertip.

The tip dropped to the floor with a violent hiss. The laser had just barely missed Hunk's skin, lightly singeing his hair.

"That's one…"
Allura looked up past the myriad of holographic displays before her. Coran's orange-tinted moustache seemed to tingle.
"Anybody else smell, uh… burning?"
Coran took a deep, exaggerated whiff of the air, before looking down.

Where the fingertip of the face-grasping creature once sat, a small hole had slowly been eaten through the ship. The glistening, clean architecture of the ship gave way to a sickly green goop, melting away everything down to the next floor. The hole was small, barely enough to place a finger through, but the acid melted clean through.

Shiro motioned an X with his hands, looking upwards to the creatures still wrapped around their neck.
"We can't cut them off."
Keith's eye twitched violently, "So what can we do, Shiro? Just let them die here?"
"All we can do is just… think and...—"
"And what?"
The creatures shuddered lightly, a last quiet dance, before falling limp to the floor.
"…Wait."

Within a few minutes, the two remaining Paladins were gasping for air, lungs straining for raspy breath.
Between coughs, Hunk could barely manage words. Not for lack of trying.
"Oh… Oh man, oh god!"
Lance's smile lit up the medbay, sparkling glitter in his eyes.
"Hunk! You're okay! Oh man, I'd hug you if you weren't all… icky and… buggy."
"Yeah… Thanks. Put it… on tab for me later?" Hunk spluttered out another string of coughs.
Pidge was sucking in air as fast as she could, panting. As her breathing slowed to normal gradually, she straightened her now-cracked glasses, a diagonal line of white sliding through the centre of her lenses.
She looked downward, to her shaking hands, then further past it, the dead, bone-white hand curled into a rough ball of protruding fingers and prehensile tails.

There was a long silence. The scent of pyrrhic victory filled the warm air.
Hunk and Pidge seemed fine, now. But it wasn't from any action of the Paladins.
They simply stopped. No explanation, no clear reasoning. Dropped off like flies.

Hunk's body lurched downward as he sat up.
"I'm not… feeling too hot."
"Don't worry man, it'll be fine! C'mon, I'll take you back to your place. You wanna rest, right?"
"I uh… yeah. That… That'd be great, Lance. Thanks."
Hunk placed a heavy arm over Lance's shoulder, sharing the weight of standing between them. They gradually limped to the door, Lance straining slightly.
"You're not the lightest, are ya?"
Hunk's chuckles echoed heartily into the next room.

Pidge looked up at Allura, amber eyes glistening wide through thick-rimmed, broken glasses.
Her short auburn hair was in shambles, stray hairs propping up in every direction.
"Do you… think we're going to be alright?"
Allura embraced Pidge lovingly, holding her shaking head lightly against her warm body.
"You're going to be fine, Pidge.
We're gonna do a few checks on you to make sure you're alright, and then you'll be tip-top."
"But… What about Hunk?"
Shiro planted his mechanical hand on Pidge's shoulder.
"Whatever it was, Pidge, you've both had to deal with it. We're just checking on you to make sure that nothing's wrong, and by making sure you're alright, we'll know of Hunk's fine, too."
Keith scratched his head as he started up. "Not that he'd let us check on him, anyway. Guy loves his beauty sleep."

The night was dark as pitch, an imagined chill wind sweeping through every deck of the massive Castle of Lions. The entire ship thrummed with the cold silence of the void. They were so close to death aboard that ship. Every Paladin thought it.
It could have been me.
We should have been safer.
If I went, we'd lose Voltron.
How could we put their lives in danger?
Is Pidge okay?
Is Hunk?
What were those creatures?

The void was silence, sleepless in the cold.
The vastness of space thrummed with the quiet of survival.
But still, it gave its answer.
The mice were missing.