Marked For Death | klangst

Twenty-Seven.

"So what are we doing about this Striatha situation?" Lance asked when he had wiggled himself out of everyone's embrace because he couldn't breathe.

"I say we go down there and kick her ass," Keith muttered absentmindedly. Lance smacked his arm, glancing at Pidge. Keith rolled his eyes.

"I don't think it's going to be that easy, Keith," Shiro warned, crossing his arms. "We need to be careful. Striatha's already shown us what she's capable of. She could just as easily do that again. If we go in there guns blazing, there's no telling what could happen."

"She has this hold over me... What if I just don't go? Separate myself from the pack so nothing bad can happen?" Lance asked, folding his own arms across his body.

"But what if we need Voltron? You need to pilot the Blue Lion for that to happen," Pidge pointed out, shoving her glasses further up the bride of her nose.

"I thought any kind of electronic device couldn't operate down there?" Lance remembered, a perplexed frown covering his face.

"Originally, yeah," Hunk replied. "But then Pidge and I came up with this light cannon that would counteract the radio wave interference caused from the fog. It's how we found you."

"Huh..." Lance trailed off, nodding in astonishment. "You're gone for two weeks and come back to a science lesson. Are we sure things are any different?"

Keith rolled his eyes again. "Ha-ha, so funny."

Lance flipped his choppy bangs sassily. "I know. Anyways, are we sure using Voltron to bring her down is the best idea? I mean, if she's already using me to get to it, why would we go down there and fight her with the very thing she's after? It's like handing her a win on a silver platter."

"I don't see any other options, though," Shiro said. "As of right now, Voltron is our best bet."

"What if we just keep her here in the castle, like as our prisoner?" Pidge suggested.

"What benefit would that serve us? Then she's really close to Voltron," Keith pointed out.

"Not if we find a way to prevent her from speaking," Pidge continued, smirking her "I-have-a-brilliant-idea" smirk.

"You mean... gag her?" Lance asked, trying to contain a snort of inappropriate laughter.

Pidge glared at him. "In a less elegant manner of speaking... yes. Just think, though. If she can't say the spell, Lance wouldn't be in any danger. We could take her down."

"I don't know... It seems a bit risky. Like what if something doesn't go according to plan? What if we do bring Lance with us, think we have her trapped but don't, and manages to use Lance against us anyways?" Hunk speculated, breaking his silence.

"Hunk is right," Lance agreed. "There are too many things that could go wrong with that plan. What we need to do is remove her from the equation once and for all -- get rid of her for good."

"You mean... kill her?" Pidge questioned in shock.

"Lance, I don't think that's necessary..." Shiro began to say, casting his eyes to the floor.

"Why not? Striatha has hundreds, maybe thousands, of people to their deaths, transforming them into her puppets for a little while and then disposing of them when they are no longer useful to her. She needs to be stopped," Lance insisted, his mouth set into a straight line.

"We're supposed to be defenders of the universe, Lance, not killers," Shiro countered.

"And how do you explain Zarkon, then?" Lance retaliated, his usually calm and understanding persona quickly evaporating as his temper rose.