What is Love Anyways? [Klance]

Chapter 8

Pidge's equipment was heavy and she knew it. She grabbed the lightest thing she could find, claiming it was the frailest and the boys would break it.

After an extremely tiring journey everything was in place and the waiting game began.

While Pidge ran her tests with the help of Hunk (team Punk they called themselves) the leaders began discussing what Keith assumed was battle strategy. That left Keith, Lance, and Chorrol, with the nervous Genopians and a few other rebel and blade cadets.

When the small talk began to get unbearable the three of them broke off from the group and went to check on team Punk's progress.

"It will probably be another few hours so that we can have reliable data to study. Also..." Keith zoned the rest of her explanation out.

Chorrol eventually broke off as well to talk to some of the other rebels and Keith and Lance were left to themselves in a corner of the softly lit room.

"Are you alright?" Lance asked quietly. "That was a lot to go through out of nowhere."

Keith nodded. "Yeah. I'm okay. I just wish this was done already."

"I can agree with that. I'm getting hungry."

Keith glanced around. Everyone seemed relatively distracted, no one was paying attention to them. Pidge especially.

So, he reached down and held Lance's hand in his own. Any uneasiness he had felt before melted away and he smiled when Lance squeezed his hand back in encouragement.

They stayed like that for a while, quietly observing the room in each other's presence. Then Kolivan called out to the room.

"Take a break, get some food. I assume that you two can handle this without us all in the room."

"No problem, we'll get everyone together when we finish," Hunk said.

With that everyone was dismissed to their ships. Hunk took a break and made lunch for everyone before heading back with Pidge and the Genopians. Allura and Coran were doing more research on the stones so Keith and Lance stayed back with them.

Coran was scanning over the screens of his station, calculating probabilities and other things that Keith didn't have the first idea of. Allura was interacting with a hologram of their current position in the solar system. Coran grunted and made a pushing motion with his hand, sending holographic information onto Allura's diagram. A few of the smaller planets glowed and there was a notification symbol in the top left of the display, indicating there was more to be seen.

"What does that mean?" Lance asked from Keith's side.

Coran clicked a few more things before joining the three of them at hologram display. "Using the new information about the crystals and the intel from the rebels I was able to pinpoint which planets the Galra could be using the mind control crystals on."

Keith readdressed the map with new eyes. There were two planets in this specific system, but that little notification told him that there more.

Allura scrutinized the two planets before reaching for the notification. It pulled their view from the current system to a much broader image of the known universe. Now it was obvious that at least 100 planets were infected.

Many of them were closest to the heart of the empire.

Keith watched as Allura's hand fell to her side and her fingers clenched into a fist. Lance had his lips held in a tight line as he stared at the colorful circles and Coran gasped at the sheer number of them.

This was much worse than they had originally thought.

"What... How are we going to...?" Lance's question was left unanswered, all of them thinking the exact same thing.