Fake Mistletoe | Plance

12 (Lance)

enjoy my crappy 2am writing

We bode Keith and Griffin farewell before ambling to the lion hangars. Pidge left us with a short salute and headed for Green, while Kinkade and I progressed to Red.

"It's beautiful," Kinkade breathed. "The build is stunning," he marvelled as we clambered in.

"You'll need to buckle up, Red's the fastest," I informed him cockily. Kinkade turned to face me with a look of insane irritation.

"There are no seatbelts. Or other seats, for that matter," he grumbled.

"Figure of speech," I waved his remark off. "If you really want to sit down, you're welcome to sit in my lap." I smirked.

"No thanks," He gingerly gripped the back of the seat, his knuckles paling.

"Okay, we're off," I commenced liftoff, and in seconds we were hundreds of metres from the Atlas, leaving everyone far behind.

"She flies really smoothly," Kinkade observed, his comfort in the lion increasing.

"Yeah, when I'm flying slowly," I taunted, jarring the control slightly so as to make Red jolt. Kinkade shot me a look that declared he regretted agreeing to go with me. "Sorry, okay, I'll fly normally," I apologised, turning back to him sincerely. "So, you and Rizavi, then?"

"Nadia? What about her? And why is that relevant now?"

"Well, we need to talk about something," I insisted, waving my hand around in the air. "About her? Are you dating? What's the status?"

"We aren't dating. We went to the dance as friends and that's all there is to know." Kinkade shut me down. "Besides, what's happening with the small one? Pidge, is it?"

"Yeah, she's Pidge. Technically Katie. When I first met her, she was disguised as a boy. And she'd made like these weird devices that could pick up radio chatter, like, really far away,"

"Crazy," Kinkade uttered, his voice not fully invested in what he was saying.

"And then we found Blue. You know I originally piloted Blue? That's why I have the blue armour. The only people who haven't ever changed lions are Hunk and Pidge. Hunk fits his lion really well, actually, thinking about it." I sped up slightly, noting Kinkade's Pidge has a weird plant-y connection with this planet Olkarion, which helped her bond with Green. She's really into technology."

"Oh yeah?" Kinkade mumbled, trying to follow what I was saying. "You like her a lot,"

"No! Well, I mean, as a friend, sure, but..." Kinkade didn't seem to be paying attention any more. We'd neared an insignificant moon, its craters crumbling, yet the majority of the terrain remained undisturbed. "Hey, shall we go down there?"

"Sure," Kinkade agreed, his interest growing marginally.

We prepared to exit Red, helmets on and oxygen generators functioning. I gave Kinkade an awkward glance as he followed me to the point at which we could depart. We climbed from Red's jaws and surveyed the land that surrounded us. Dust clouded about our feet as we stepped onto the surface. No signs of toxicity or danger made themselves known, so I deemed it safe.

"This is cool, right?" I exclaimed, a grin spreading across my features.

"Uh... Yeah," Kinkade acknowledged, testing the ground with his own boot, as though my rigorous checks hadn't been enough. "It's pretty cool."

"So, any ideas as to what we should do?" I tilted my head at him, hopping forwards, the lower gravity ensuring a slow descent. "I mean, we can't exactly have a picnic or anything, but we could, like, leave a message for someone to find, or-" I halted my speech, because Kinkade's gaze was no longer towards Red and me. His eyes had drifted to a shape nearing the moon at a worrying rate.

"What the hell is that?" Those were the most words I'd heard him say all day. I squinted at it, and only one treacherous entity arose in my mind. The object, ever-nearing, was reminiscent of a pirates' battle cruiser.

"Quiznak," I mumbled, for fear of a more obscene word. "I think I know exactly what that is, and it's not good," I faced him with a grave sense of mounting dread. "I think it's pirates."

We hadn't strayed too far from Red, but we'd have to move quickly if we wanted to avoid any conflict. I signalled to Kinkade to move and he nodded sharply in reply. To our sheer horror, as we reached Red, a tractor beam appeared seemingly from nowhere. Nowhere being another ship that had materialised from the opposite side of the cruiser.

"What do we do now?" Kinkade queried, his eyes darting from me, to Red, to the two ships and back again.

"I... don't know." I admitted desperately, stopping in my tracks. "But we need to do something, and fast,"

"Send our a message," Kinkade suggested. In fact, his 'suggestion' posed itself as more of an order, but I did as he said, having no superior ideas.

"Greetings, this is the Paladin of the Red Lion. We mean no harm. We'll just leave you in peace, if that's sufficient." I broadcasted the message. It seemed the message was not deemed sufficient. Laser beams and energy pulses rained down on us, forcing us to scatter and sprint. Even in my haste, I managed to arrive at the conclusion that we'd need backup. And fast. I sent the standard distress signal to Voltron, hoping someone would receive it. It seemed the most logical thing to do, even if logic had never been an asset of mine.

Once I'd sent the signal, I activated my jetpack and used the added speed to evade the shots. There was no point in using my bayard. Unless there happened to be any fighters on the ground that I hadn't seen yet, I chose to not have to bear the extra weight until necessary.

"Lance!" Amongst other garbled words, I caught Kinkade's gruff voice over the surge of machines yelling. He was in trouble and unarmed. I found him quicker than expected; he was fending off multiple pirates at once. I hurriedly activated my bayard and fired at them from behind. This lost me my advantage of being unseen, but allowed Kinkade time to escape.

Two of them closed in on me, one armed with a fear-inducing sword, the other gripping a blaster that closely resembled a pistol. The latter was simple to wipe off my worries; a simple shot of the blaster just slightly too close for comfort and he scurried away to another pirate, presumably to ask for orders. The remaining pirate stood their ground, a scaly tail swishing irritably from side to side. I took a lunge with my fist instead of my blaster. If a shot were to hit at such a close range, it'd have likely resulted in my own injury.

The pirate almost sniggered at my measly attempt of a punch. Now I saw why Keith spent so much of his time training. I threw yet another punch, dodging the slashes the pirate made with the sword, kicking, anything to refrain from being attacked too soon. I managed to land a proper hit directly in the face, making the tailed pirate recoil in pain, hissing like a maddened cat. I raised my shield in all hope of avoiding the sword. It appeared lethal just in her hand, so I couldn't imagine how it would feel in the thigh or abdomen.

I made a kick, and that was the point at which I realised I had made a terrible mistake. I cried out in agony as my exposed side became a victim to the sharpened blade. The blood had already begun to seep through my bodysuit like water through a sponge. Kinkade shouted something, and I attempted to get up, resulting in a mutilated series of cries and wails. One of the pirates yelled a command to the others as I furiously tried to stand up.

My vision began to blacken at the edges, my side draining, blood splattering onto the ground, flowing steadily. I sensed a pair of arms softly scoop me up.

"Lance, stay awake, okay? We need to save the lion... someone needs to get here soon... It's going to be okay. Keep breathing, alright?" Kinkade spoke gently but a sort of terror trapped his voice that I'd rarely heard in anyone's, especially not someone who spoke so little. "Stay here. Keep breathing, I need to fight them off," Kinkade propped my limp figure up against a rock and departed, directing himself into a rainstorm without a coat.