WARNINGS: canon-typical violence of the Naruto world, blood, shitty fight scene, established relationship, swearing, one-shot.

SUMMARY: Coming back from a mission in Suna, team Voltron is assaulted by a group of missing-nin.

(Or: the ANBU Klance AU that I haven't been able to take out of my head after I found that one picture on Tumblr.)

fighting at your side

He grunts, heavy and labored, and backflips, using his momentum to slash at his opponent's throat.

The kunai nicks the skin, drawing blood. It's just a scratch, a wound that's more for show than actual damage, but it makes Lance grin.

It may be just a scratch, but it's a victory nonetheless, because Lance's forte doesn't lie in close combat, but in fighting long distance with his sharp, poisoned senbon. Lance can use the standard shinobi weapons well enough—he graduated from the fucking Academy, after all—, but he's much better suited to provide cover and support from a distance.

Technically, he could try to fight with ninjutsu, but they are currently in fucking Wind Country and Lance is a Suiton user. There isn't much water in the earth or in the air that he can draw, and he would rather not use their small provision of drinkable water unless he doesn't have a choice anymore.

The other nin snarls and grabs Lance's ankle, and then throws him over her head.

Lance flips in mid-air, glad that he's been in this kind of situation before, because he now knows how to land in a way that lets him launch an immediate counter-attack.

His sandals barely touch the ground before he's throwing himself back towards his attacker, sending a handful of normal senbon her way. The woman clearly isn't expecting the swift counter; she dodges most of them, but she's off-balance, and Lance doesn't hesitate before using the opening she has so graciously granted him, the one he has been waiting for since the beginning of the confrontation. He throws another handful of normal senbon that she evades, but he isn't trying to hit her with them—they are a distraction for the real attack. Before she can regain her balance, Lance snatches up ten long senbon needles coated in paralytic poison and throws them at the missing-nin.

All ten of them hit her in different parts of her body, and Lance feels the thrill of complete victory setting in.

He ignores her sneer—his poison is a homemade brew, courtesy of Pidge, and even if she already has numerous antidotes coursing through her veins (which is not uncommon in Suna, Lance knows) it won't make a difference, because this particular brew needs a very specific antidote to counteract it.

It's not long after her limbs have locked in place that he sees the realization dawn in her eyes. Her superior smirk disappears, replaced by horrified incredulity, and Lance can't help but smile smugly at her.

It's a shame that she can't appreciate it, as his expression is covered by his porcelain mask.

Then Lance hears a grunt and a muffled scream of pain, and he's alert once more.

The fight hasn't finished just because he's defeated his opponent—the rest of his team is still trying to subdue theirs.

He looks quickly towards Bear and Monkey, but they aren't having too much trouble with their three remaining opponents; the fourth one is currently laying on the floor not too far away, either unconscious or dead.

Eagle is nowhere to be seen, though Lance knows his chakra signature and can feel him leaking killing intent, which means that he's still fighting within a radius of one hundred meters.

Lance's eyes finally land on the last member of the team, and the source of the scream.

He sees Lynx cradle his ribs with a hand, blood staining the gray vest a dark red, and he swears. Without hesitation, Lance makes a tiger seal and, with a quick burst of chakra, he shunshins right to the side of his injured comrade. Just in time, too, as the man who's fighting him appears right in front of Lynx, ready to slash away with his tantō once again.

Lance quickly grabs Lynx by the waist and body flickers away. When the technique stops, he swirls around swiftly but trying not to rustle Lynx too much, and throws a batch of normal senbon to the man.

The nin avoids them, replacing himself with a rock. Lance swears colorfully, forms another tiger seal and uses another burst of chakra to get them away from their attacker.

"He's a Dōton user," Lynx rasps. "And he's very fast," he adds, just as the sandy soil beneath their feet starts crumbling and collapsing on itself.

"Fuck."

Lance strains himself to activate a fourth shunshin, and calculates mentally how much chakra he has and how many uses of the technique would be safe to make. His mouth twists—his chakra reserves were already low after the mission, and he hadn't had time to replenish them before they were attacked. The consecutive uses of shunshin aren't helping; he doesn't think he can make more than two extra jumps before he has to stop using justsu completely if he doesn't want to collapse and become a hindrance.

He could take a soldier pill, but it would be the third in three days, which is not a good idea. There's too much risk of it burning off too quickly to be of any use, and he can't risk being knocked off when they're under attack. Won't risk it.

"Shark, move!" Lynx says suddenly, pushing Lance away from the sharp metal of the tantō, and Lance swears as he sees the blade go right through Lynx's arm.

"Fucker," he hisses, angry beyond belief not only at the enemy nin, but also at the stupid, self-sacrificing idiot that is his second in command.

He jumps and flashes through a quick sequence of highly-practiced hand-signs, and directs his subsequent attack at the bastard's head.

The man is too distracted to dodge, or maybe Lance is moving too fast—he doesn't really know, and doesn't care to analyze it. A small trickle of water condensates from the air around them, and he forces it to smack the guy in the face.

It's a party trick, something silly that every genin with a modicum of talent for Suiton Jutsu is taught early on, a simple E-rank jutsu that doesn't demand much in terms of chakra input.

But it's surprising and completely unexpected in the middle of the desert, especially by a missing-nin from Suna. The man splutters and takes a step back, a hand coming up to clean up his face, and Lynx uses the moment to take off the man's tantō, swing it around with deadly precision, and use it to slash his neck.

It's anti-climatic, after the chase and the trouble he's given them. The man is dead in seconds, taken out with his own blade. Where he falls, the sand under his body absorbs the red of his blood, turning dense.

Lance pants, tired, and then rips off his mask to pin Lynx with a murderous glare.

"What the fuck were you trying to pull, Mullet?" he snarls, and advances towards the other man quickly.

Lynx startles and turns to him, tense, and then he too takes off his mask.

Keith looks at him defiantly. "I was saving your life, idiot," he spits, but then he pales and wobbles, and almost falls. Lance is there to catch him, though, worry and anger and relief struggling and mixing inside of him.

As Keith slumps in his arms, though, worry wins.

"Fuck, are you okay?"

Keith rolls his eyes. "I'm fine, Lance. It's just a cut."

"The thing went right through you," Lance contradicts him sharply. "And what about your ribs? Your vest is soaked in blood."

"I'm fine, you don't need to—Lance! Put me down!"

"Nuh-huh. You hissed. You are as pale as a sheet, and you were already injured from the mission before. I'm not letting you make it worse."

Keith struggles in his hold for another minute, grumbling and spitting curses at him, but then Lance pokes his rib and he yelps in pain. Lance looks at him pointedly and Keith scowls, dark and angry and completely adorable, but then he finally relents.

"Good boy," Lance says in a sing-song voice, which earns him a sharp smack with an elbow. "Ouch, okay, okay."

"Stupid, protective idiot," Keith mutters, and Lance smiles when he notices the blush staining his pale cheeks.

They have covered a lot of terrain with Lance's flickers, and he is too tired to actually run back. Plus, he has Keith's injuries to consider, so he sets his pace into a brisk but careful walk.

He doesn't hear more sounds of destruction or screams, so he guesses that the others have finished with their own assailants and are just waiting for them to show up.

Shiro will probably scold them for breaking protocol and taking off their masks, but Lance is sure he will understand once he sees the state Keith is in.

After all, their unit is more like a family than anything else.