Oh Yeah, It's All Coming Together

Chapter 2: Planet Hop

Katie woke to the putrid smell of ash and smoke.

Her head thumped; her vision blurry and unstable. She knew she wouldn't get very far if she stood up, so she carefully turned her head and situated her hands beneath her torso. Body terse and aching, she pushed herself onto her knees and groaned as blinding sunlight reached her face. Several new pains exploded behind her eyes. She could ear the chirping of some kind of animal (probably a bird, though in her experience she's learned not to judge from the Earthly perspective), but all noises sounded as though she had dunked her head underwater.

Concussion.

In her crash, she had somehow been flung out of her lion, which was steaming behind her—unless someone dragged her out? But it seemed as though she were alone, so there was no way—

"Pidge!"

Katie grimaced. She squinted at her lion, and caught sight of a blue figure running towards her from down the open mouth-ramp. "Hey, Lance," she mumbled.

He crouched beside her. Due to their close proximity, Katie could get a good look at his face: worn, a bruise on the left cheek, cut on the forehead. His hair was extremely disheveled, and more than half of his suit was covered in ash, burn marks, and small tears. He looked stressed with his eyebrows knit together, chewing his lip.

At first, Lance didn't acknowledge her. He intently dressed her wounds with Altean healing ointment—which she assumed he had previously grabbed from Green's first-aid compartment. It was only after he finished smearing the electric blue goop around her forehead did he finally say something to her.

"Thank God you're alright."

Katie felt a blush rise up from her neck to her cheeks. She chalked it up to the concussion. The ointment was already having an effect. Her vision cleared ever so slowly, and the ringing in her ears had calmed to a livable level.

"What happened here?" She asked. "Last I remember, we were—"

"— hurtling towards an unidentifiable planet?" Lance finished. "Yeah, I remember."

"I think I blacked out before that. Do you know where we are?" Katie directed her attention to the info pad located on the forearm of her suit and accessed her Katie-hacked Altea database.

"I just assumed we landed on that planet the Castle was orbiting," Lance said. He shrugged. "I woke up about a full day ago. This morning I brought you out here while I shuffled through Green and Blue's decks looking for First Aid."

Katie squinted at him, then at her muddy uniform. "You could've been a little more aware as to where you dropped me," she snipped. "And that planet? It's called Halix."

Lance bristled. "You've been through worse," he noted with twinkling eyes. "No different than leaving dinner after a food-goo fight."

Katie dabbled with a few more settings on her database. She smirked. "Now that brings up some memories."

They sat in companionable silence after that, waiting for Katie's system to recover enough to tell them at least the composition of the planet they were on. Katie had a bit of a bad feeling settling in her stomach as the scanner took longer and longer to pick up any reads—it shouldn't have taken more than a couple seconds assuming they were on Halix, because she had that one saved in her recents.

When the scanner beeped, indicating its completion, a list of statistics poured into her info pad. Lance sat down fully and peered over her shoulder as she dreadfully read through the data provided.

Katie nearly chucked her tracker at the nearest tree.

"We're not on Halix," she hissed. "Damnit."