"Looky what WE found!"

Lotor turned to see Ezor and Narti dropping the infiltrators on the floor. The Voltron paladins, shackles on their wrists and fire in their eyes.

"They must have heard we were having a party!" Ezor chirped, twisting the arm nearest her. "We TOLD them they weren't invited, but they didn't go away, so we brought them here."

"Hah!" Zethrid mashed a fist into her palm. "This might as well be MY party!"

Lotor held up a hand.

"Zethrid, what was the one thing I said I wanted today?"

"No throttling," she grumbled.

"Correct. This is a party, and we are going to treat them as our guests. However," Lotor added, "As they DID show up uninvited, we will not be sharing the cake with them."

"You guys have CAKE?" whined the paladin in blue.

"And it's REALLY good, too," Ezor sidled up to him.

"Fuck off!" the red one shouted, trying to kick her. She laughed as she ducked away.

"Is that any way to behave at a party?" she said. "Sounds like you need a time out."

"Whatever you want from us, you'll NEVER get it!"

"I don't doubt it," Lotor sighed. "Because what I want is to enjoy my birthday in peace, but it seems you've already ruined that for me."

Ezor caught the red kid by the collar and slammed him to his knees.

"Ezor, *I* wanted to do that!" Zethrid growled.

"Peace and quiet, remember," Lotor said, taking a knife to the cake. "We'll interrogate them later, but for now they'll just have to watch." Then he turned to the paladins. "If you don't mind, I haven't had a proper birthday cake in a rather long time. I expect you'll understand."

They didn't need to know just HOW long.

"Are you kidding? This is BULLSHIT!" the red one shouted.

He shut up when a gun trained itself on him. Lotor didn't look up.

"It would be in your best interests to wait till I'm finished."

He handed Acxa the first piece of cake. She had leave to start, but he knew she wouldn't.

"I'm sure you're all wondering about this cake," Lotor said as he cut another piece. "It's a gift from our friends on Planet Tameran. If I recall correctly, you lot had a bit of trouble befriending the Tameraneans?"

The sneer was not entirely intentional. There wasn't a lot he could hold over the Voltron paladins, but their failure at Tameran was not one they'd forgotten.

If only it was his birthday more often.

Ezor bounded over before he could give the next slice to Narti. He chuckled and gave it to her instead.

"You REALLY wouldn't believe how good this is," she smeared a forkful over her tongue and grinned at the paladins.

Lotor smiled. Ezor was a good kid, put her in the bleakest situation and still she'd find something to make her own. If you gave her a piece of paper, she'd break out of a cell with it. And if you gave her a cake and an order not to kill, she'd make the prisoners WISH they were dead. Perhaps today's cruelty was a bit unnecessary, but it was earning him a somewhat-quiet party, and who was he to complain?

He took Narti's hand and guided it to the plate.

"Fork's on the right."

It was too bad she couldn't see the looks on the paladins' faces. He hoped the extra frosting would make up for that.

"Zethrid," he called.

"You little shits better keep quiet," she snarled as she headed over.

The cake was unattended for all of one second, when the red child came barreling up and body-slammed into it.

"Fuck you and your stupid fucking birthday cake!"

Lotor winced inwardly. It really had been a long time since his last birthday cake…

"Zethrid," he said. "You have permission to hurt them now."