Vrepit Sa

Chapter Two

The next morning, the paladins woke to an alarm blaring. They all rushed to get their gear and weapons and get to the main control room. Keith arrived first, blade unsheathed and ready for a fight. Lance stumbled in next, trying to fix his helmet, with Pidge and Hunk close behind, all on high alert.

  "What's going on, Princess?" Hunk gasped out, trying to catch his breath.

  Allura turned her attention to the four, fury burning in her eyes. "We have an intruder on board our ship. A Galra intruder." Keith frowned. "Are we near a base-?" Allura shook her head. "They aren't of The Blade of Marmora. Their ship is one of Zarkon's."
  Lance frowned, "How is their ship on board?" Allura sighed and rubbed her temples. "It was circling us last night, but for some reason the sensors didn't pick it up-"

  "And just now, we had spotted it hovering near by, a small little thing, really, only fit for one Galra, so we brought it in for encapturement." Coran added. Allura nodded in agreement. "Yes, but unfortunately, whoever was in the ship was too quick for us, so once we had them in the enclosed hangar-"

"They escaped." Keith interrupted. "But how??"

  "Most likely, through the vents," Pidge mumbled, more to herself than anyone else, but Coran nodded. "Precisely! However, we um, have lost track of exactly where they have gone. Some systems are quite damaged and I'm still trying to fix them up-"

  "Hold up, hold up." Hunk held up his hands. "There's a Galran soldier of Zarkon in the castle ship, and you lost him?"

  Allura huffed an annoyed sigh. "That's why we activated the alarms, to get you all down here."

  Keith looked to the other paladins. "Lance, Hunk, let's spread out and find this intruder. Pidge, stay here and try to help Coran out with the damaged systems." Pidge and Hunk nodded, but Lance glared.

  "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold up! Since when are you the leader??" Lance reached out and jabbed a finger into Keith's chest. Keith frowned, "I'm not the leader, Lance, I'm just trying to help-"

  "Yeah well don't go getting ahead of yourself with trying to boss us around." Lance held his glare for a tick before turning and running off down one of the long corridors, calling over his shoulder, "C'mon, Hunk! We have an intruder to find!"

  Hunk looked back at Keith, empathy in his eyes, but followed after Lance anyways. "Wait up, Lance!"

  Keith sighed and ran a shaking hand through his hair. Was that the impression he was giving off? That he was trying to be the leader? But he didn't want to-

"-Keith," Allura snapped him out of his thoughts. "Keith are you okay?"

  Keith put on a grim poker face, nodding curtly. "M'fine, Princess. Don't worry. We'll bring the intruder to you soon enough." With that he ran off down the adjacent corridor to the one Lance and Hunk went down.

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  After leaving the main control room, Lance and Hunk's pace slowed down to a steady walk.

  There was a moment of silence as they caught their breaths, before Hunk spoke up. "What's your deal with Keith, dude?" He looked over at Lance, who kept looking straight ahead. "I mean, I get you have that whole 'rivalry' thing going on, but I mean, we're all pretty stressed and he's just trying to help. I'm sure the last thing he wants to do is take Shiro's place as leader-"

  Lance held up his free hand to stop Hunk from saying more. "It just, it feels like he's always one-upping me, ya know? Like now Shiro's gone and he's all on Allura and sweet talking her and trying to take charge of the team,"

  "Someone has to take charge of the team, right?? We can't be completely leaderless. And I'm pretty sure he hasn't sweet talked Allura, he just convinced her to let us get some sleep, which I'm personally grateful for, because I was so sure we were all just gonna let her work us till we passed out."

  Lance sighed and rubbed the back of his head, "Yeah. I guess so, I dunno."

  Just then, Hunk stopped walking. "Hey, I think I hear something- I'm gonna head this way, okay? You keep going straight." Lance frowned, "Oh. okay. Yell if you need backup." Hunk nodded once and branched off from Lance, leaving the blue paladin to continue his tread down the corridor by himself.

  He had lost track of how much time had passed, taking random turns down different hallways, straining to hear any out of place sound. Lance was about to find his way back to the main control room, when he saw, from the corner of his eye, a dark figure shift ever so slightly.

  Lance froze.

  Slowly, he turned his body to face where he had seen the dark figure move.

  Without warning, the figure up and bolted past Lance, spinning him and leaving him to land on his ass. "Hey!!" Lance shouted after it, but it payed no attention.

  As quick as he could, Lance was back on his feet and running after it, bayard in hand, "Hey, stop!!" Genius, Lance, the Galran intruder who works for Zarkon is totally gonna stop because you told them to.

  Lance contemplated calling for backup from Hunk or Keith, but decided not to. If he could catch the intruder on his own, it would be a total win for him, something he could definitely rub in Keith's face. As Lance was thinking about the small possible victory, he didn't realize that the corridor had come to a dead end, and the intruder was coming to a halt, and ended up barreling right into them, knocking both then and Lance to the ground.

  Luckily for Lance, he had landed in such a way that made it impossible for the Galran soldier to escape from under him. Lance regained his thoughts and better positioned himself over the soldier, his bayard to their chest. "Gotcha." Lance grinned harshly. "Now let's see the face of our intruder."