EARLIER THAT DAY

Shiro

"Oh, come on, Shiro!" Lance said. "It's totally my turn to come with you on patrol - why does Keith get to go?!"

From where he stood at Shiro's right side, Keith growled in reply. "Because I'm really good at surveillance, and you're better at flying into things."

Lance felt annoyed, and it showed in his voice. "That was like, one time, Keith."

"So far," Keith answered under his breath. There was a hint of a smile in his eyes, but it wasn't a malicious one. Shiro knew this was just Keith's version of humor, but he guessed Lance might not understand that quite yet. Shiro had known Keith for years, and right now, he had to keep them from getting into one of their usually-harmless-but-time-consuming arguments.

So Shiro just sighed and interjected before the other two began fighting again. "Lance, I promise, next time I go out on patrol on an alien planet, you can come with me." He gave Lance a genuine smile and put a hand on his shoulder. "But look at it this way," he went on. "You'll get to help Pidge and Hunk figure out why the planet's atmosphere is…

"Toxic to Altean technology?" Lance asked. "I'm still not sure why we decided we wanted to take a pod down here - even with a special shield Pidge invented - for it like - yesterday. I mean - if it's dangerous, why did we want to come down here at all?"

"The planet's not toxic to Altean technology," Keith said. "It's the electrical storms in the atmosphere - they interfere with normal space instruments. That's why we think the Galra haven't made a base here yet. And also, it's why we wanted to explore the planet. Look for signs of habitation, maybe some way of utilizing the -"

"Whatever," Lance interrupted. "I still miss having our Lions with us."

Keith growled in the back of his throat at the interruption, but Shiro interjected before another argument could break out.

"Lance," he said, "I think it'll be good for you to be with the others. I'm sure Hunk would love to have you nearby - especially when we're all in a strange place. And Pidge too, even though she might not say it out loud."

Lance sighed, nodded, and started to turn and head back towards the shuttle they'd come in. But then he stopped and turned back towards them.

"Just - both of you come back from patrol in one piece, okay?"

"Huh?" Keith asked, confused. He didn't even know he'd said it until Lance answered him.

"It's just - we need both of you back safe. So - don't go getting swallowed by a volcano or anything, okay?"

Shiro chuckled and clapped Lance once more on the shoulder. "Okay, Lance - we won't get swallowed by a volcano."

Keith looked faintly puzzled, as if he wanted to ask why Lance thought they might get swallowed by a volcano, but he just blinked, shrugged, and nodded.

Was Lance worried that their armor or weapons weren't up to scratch? That didn't seem to make sense to Keith.

None of them had proper armor or bayards yet - Pidge and Hunk had done really well in making temporary replacements for what had been taken by the Galra, but there was a limit to what they'd been able to do. The armor was standard Altean gear - just white, with minimal markings. The weapons each of the Paladins carried didn't collapse like their bayards had, or take multiple forms based on the Paladin's preference. But they were better than nothing, though.

Keith wore his broadsword over his back - Lance had called him 'Link' for all of two minutes before Keith had threatened to call him 'Bullseye' and then Shiro had stepped in and said that no one was going to be nicknaming anyone anything until they had had their weapons for at least a month.

As Shiro and Keith headed into the forest, Keith asked Shiro what Lance had meant by making them promise not to 'fall into a volcano'. Shiro moved quietly through the trees, but he looked over at Keith when he answered the question.

"It's his way of saying 'Don't die," Shiro said.

Keith blinked, still feeling confused.

"Then why didn't he just say -"

Shiro shot his friend a grin. "It's Lance. He rarely says everything he means in so many words."

Keith grunted. "Kinda ironic, given how much he talks-"

Shiro shrugged, smiling a little. "It's just who he is."

Keith half-smiled to himself, but suddenly stopped in his tracks, bending down to examine something in the long grass, his brow furrowing in concentration.

"Shiro, come and look at this - "

Shiro turned to see Keith pointing at what looked like a cross between a catapult and crossbow. It was set near the ground, almost completely hidden between a pile of stones and a large tree trunk.

"I think it's a - " Keith began, but suddenly a harsh, piercing noise rang out through the trees, almost like a siren. Both Shiro and Keith jumped in startled surprise. Shiro activated the weapons setting on his cybernetic arm, turning in a circle to see what was going on.

"Lance, come in," he said into the comms unit inside his helmet. "There's been some sort of-"

He broke off as he saw Keith's reaction to the sound. The Red Paladin had fallen to one knee, clutching at his head. He was grimacing in pain.

Shiro quickly came to his friend's side, asking what was wrong. Over the comms, he heard Pidge contacting Allura and Coran, and then everyone was on the comms.

But all of Shiro's attention was focused on Keith.

His friend's eyes were half-closed, his face contorted with pain and confusion. "I - I don't know," he said in answer to Shiro's concern. "It's - the noise - something - something - about it - it - oh, God, Shiro, it - it really hurts-"

Shiro's eyes widened then. Keith never, ever acknowledged pain. It wasn't that he didn't feel it, he just usually ignored it until the crisis was over, and then found a way to treat it on his own.

And although Shiro found the noise piercing, it wasn't painful.

But - if Keith was of Galran descent - as they'd begun to suspect - oh, shit.

This was probably a defensive tactic used against the Galra.

From what little he remembered from his time in captivity, Shiro knew that Galrans were sensitive to certain ranges of sound. If a weapon this planet's inhabitants produced could somehow project those ranges of sound - say, at a high enough volume or frequency— that kind of sonic weapon could incapacitate or even kill the target.

And the device, hidden almost out of sight. Some sort of trap?

Probably.

This had to mean that this planet was inhabited - somehow. The Castle's scanners hadn't picked up any reading of cities or life on the planet's surface - but maybe this race was subterranean - living underground to keep out of the Galran reach -

Then there was a sudden rise in the volume of the siren, and Keith suddenly wrenched off his helmet, trying to cover both his ears with his hands at the same time. He was screaming now, maybe because he was trying to drown out the sound of the siren, and his nose was bleeding.

Shiro felt adrenaline rush through him. He had to get his friend out of here, away from the noise. He didn't know what might happen if he didn't.

"Hang on," Shiro said. "We're heading back to the castle-Lance, Pidge, Hunk, get back to the pod, right now - we'll meet you there -"

He had already grabbed Keith and lifted him over his shoulder, intent on getting him back to the pod, and then back to the castle, as fast as possible. He grabbed Keith's helmet from the ground as he spoke into the comms, beginning to move as quickly as he could.

Their helmets were designed to protect them from usual weapons, and even - for very, very short periods of time - the vacuum of space - but judging from Keith's reaction, it couldn't protect him from this.

Come to think of it, maybe the weapon had been specialized to bypass the armor of Galran soliders. It would make sense.

Even as Shiro began heading back the way they had come, something hissed through the trees.

He barely managed to dodge out of the way of a crossbow bolt, realizing - somewhere in a far corner of his mind - that he had also recognized the device Keith had pointed out to him, right before the siren had begun wailing.

It was a trap, and it had a time delay. When you activated the trap - usually by shifting a weight that kept the trigger in place - it took a few seconds for the bolt to fire - but when it did, you did not want to be in its path.

It was a way for the target to become confused and frightened, causing them to try and dodge out of the way - and it usually meant there was more than one trap in the immediate area.

There were more hissing noises now - more bolts being activated, hissing back and forth around them.

But Shiro didn't have a choice. He couldn't wait to figure out the pattern - even if there was one.

Because if Keith stayed here, he might die.

So, Shiro just turned and ran as fast he could, hoping one of the bolts wouldn't go through his leg, because if it did, neither of them would make it back to the shuttle. The comms were still going crazy, worried voices asking him what was wrong, what had happened to Keith.

Then something twisted underneath Shiro's foot, and he did fall then, Keith going down with him.

Shiro felt panic rise in his chest. What had happened - what was going on - oh, shit.

He'd run straight into a trap. Maybe the bolts had been meant to corral enemies into this spot - oh, shit.

The ground had opened up beneath them, acting almost like quicksand. He tried to reach Keith, to pull him back towards solid ground, but his friend's head had already sunk beneath the surface.

Shiro just had time to get on his comms and tell the other Paladins to get out, get back to the Castle now - to get back to Coran and Allura - before the earth swallowed him whole, and all sound suddenly cut out.

Then he felt the horrible, almost weightless sensation of falling a long way down, and of darkness closing in around him.

Allura

She and Coran had been analyzing the planet's unique atmosphere with the Castle's scanners when the shuttle had come back. Hunk was the first one out of the shuttle, saying something about quicksand and an ambush. Lance just headed straight for Blue's bay, his usually friendly face set into a fierce frown.

"We've got to go and get them," he said. "I'm going down - it won't take me long-"

But Pidge had darted in front of him, blocking the way. "You can't!" she said. "The readings Hunk and I took on the surface - listen, the atmosphere could damage Blue worse than a fleet's worth of direct fire - I think the atmosphere's electricity storms might actually be some kind of weapon, to prevent arial attack-"

It was then that Coran interjected with his own information, gathered into readable data from the Castle's systems just moments before the shuttle had returned.

Pidge's theory was correct. The atmosphere was only part of a planet-wide defense system that apparently had been set up to discourage any crafts from landing on the surface.

If anything did manage to make it through the barrier, they were met by ground troops - as Shiro and Keith had discovered.

Allura and Hunk began at once to set up a communications broadcast to the planet. Pidge's fingers flew as she worked on hacking the signal, trying to create an opening for their communications broadcast to go through.

They had tried a cursory attempt at communicating with the planet's (then only guessed at) inhabitants before the Paladins had gone down to the surface in the pod, but those previous efforts had met with no success.

At the time, the atmosphere had seemed to be a natural phenomenon, a possible technique to be used as a defense system against the Galra. So, the team had decided to investigate.

Allura swore to herself that she would never make such a foolish mistake again. She'd just been so - excited - at the possibility of finding a solution to keep the Galra from attacking a planet - any planet - that she'd allowed the Paladins to go on an exploration mission without enough information. If they'd waited - even just a few hours - the intentional planet-wide network of electrical storms would have been discovered.

But now, as a direct result of her hasty action, two of her friends were missing. The other three Paladins were frantic, and Allura was too, although she didn't show it in her voice as she helped direct Hunk through various wirings and rewirings of the communications system as they attempted to make contact with the alien race that had taken their friends.

But Coran knew her well enough to know she was terrified at the situation.

Delegates or not, Alteans knew that was never a good sign when people went missing.

The only thing to do now was to open communications with the people who had taken their friends, assure them of their good will, and to get. their. people. back.

Pidge's fingers flew over the keyboard once more, and suddenly, the main communications screen hummed and buzzed into life. Everyone came to stand behind Allura, who stood directly in front of the screen. The image flickered and blurred for a moment before resolving into to a room full of people - two of which were very familiar.

"Greetings," Allura was saying, and she seemed perfectly calm, composed, and collected. Only Coran saw how she had her hands fisted tight in her skirts, down at her side, out of the screen's direct line of sight. She was angry, and she had good cause to be so.

Both Keith and Shiro had a guard standing by each of their shoulders. They were on their knees, their arms secured by their backs, facing what seemed to be a governing body of politicians.

To Coran, it looked as if the two Paladins were on trial.

This was not good. Not good at all.

But Allura continued to introduce herself, keeping her face neutral, her voice controlled. She explained the situation, and then one of the - it looked like a council, so that would make this person a head council member - spoke.

Hunk felt his heart sink at the way the figure spoke, at the way he seemed distrustful of Allura's assurances. She was speaking again -

"I can personally confirm their - their testimony. The Black Paladin is - is not part of the Galra Empire, and the Red Paladin is - "

The council member looked directly at her then, and his red eyes glowed in a sudden outrush of feeling as it interrupted her smoothly. Its voice was that of steel in midwinter - cold, sharp, and merciless.

"The 'Red Paladin' - as you call him - is most definitely of Galran descent."

Allura felt her jaw begin to clench, but continued to speak politely, though with great effort.

"When last I looked, one's lineage alone did not determine whether they lived or died. Have the customs of civilized nations changed so drastically since last I knew them?"

The figure - Lance hadn't caught the name - tilted its head to one side. It looked enough like a human gesture to be unnerving. The alien race looked a lot like the Alteans - tall, with pointed ears - but they also had blue skin, red eyes, and claws instead of fingers.

But they definitely were neither human nor Altean.

And it sounded like they really, really hated the Galra Empire, or anything to do with it.

Which made this situation particularly volatile.

Pidge felt her shoulders tighten in tension as the conversation drew to its end. The Council - what a stupid name, Pidge thought to herself - basically refused to give Shiro and Keith back and ended the communication abrubtly.

Allura turned on her heel and immediately headed for the shuttle bay's doors.

"We haven't a moment to lose," she shot over her shoulder. "Pidge, help me install a particle barrier on the pod you just used. That should keep the atmosphere from roasting the controls when it goes through those storms a second time. Coran, you'll guard the pod once it lands on the surface. We'll try to keep it hidden with that cloaking device you engineered, Pidge. And then the Paladins and I will break in, get Keith and Shiro, and then we'll all make it back here."

They all did as she said. And it almost worked, too.

Almost.