A/N: I feel like this is building really slowly, but I promise we'll get to some real content in a chapter or two. Updates will be pretty slow because I've been super busy with work and don't have a lot of time to work on fic lately.

Keith: How much trouble did you get in yesterday?

Lance tries not to smile too noticeably when the message pops up on his Link, distracted from the absent chicken-scratch notes he was making for this class. It's the first message he's actually received from Keith, instead of just the initial connection request using Lance's ID and the acceptance of an invite to the private server Pidge runs. It has the best that both GLink (man, Lance hates that name) and Pidge have to offer, the pinnacle of easy connectivity and chat networking, saved just for the three of them. Four, now, with the addition of Keith, but the others haven't asked about this mysterious addition yet and are happy to let he and Lance speak privately.

Lance: they didnt catch me with the bike so actually not a lot. got busted sneaking into class though

He goes back to his notes after replying, not expecting a response so soon, but it's barely a minute before his Link buzzes again.

Keith: Bummer.

Keith: You're sure this is a secure line?

Lance: dude you sound like a novice spy, yes im sure its secure

Lance: tell me about this big plan of yours mr hotshot

And he does. Keith says don't talk until I've finished laying it out for you, and then sends a long string of messages, starting off stiff and formal as though he is reading directly from notes but steadily deteriorating into messy sentences and emotional phrasing, eventually reaching a point where is practically gushing about how much he hopes it works and where they'll go from there. Lance has to stop him before he gets too far ahead of himself, saying they should just stick to what he's got and work out the kinks, even though there are hardly any.

It's a pretty sound plan, Lance has to admit, simple yet elegant and (hopefully) likely to work. There is the matter of sneaking Keith into the compound – people are likely to recognise the Garrison's most skilled pilot since Takashi Shirogane and subsequently the most famous dropout – but Lance knows a few scarcely travelled back roads they can take, glad that his time sneaking around in the middle of the night is being good for something other than midnight snacks and the occasional date. The trickiest part will actually be stealing the ship; there's a couple of old Planet Hoppers that the Garrison keeps on hand for cadets to use in training, but with recent upgrades to the simulators and probably related budget shifts, they go mostly unused now, collecting dust in the west hangar. The hangars are always guarded, no matter what time of day, which makes sneaking in undetected and getting aboard a ship and flying it out of closed bay doors an extremely daunting task.

It'll be a stretch with just the two of them, would have been nigh impossible with Keith alone, and while it might be doable now, Lance doesn't want to leave Hunk out of this. He couldn't pull a heist and disappear off world without telling him, but he's not sure how Keith would feel about it. He might even try and get Pidge in on the deal; Lance knows how desperately he wants to get off world, for a reason he still doesn't know, and the guy would make hacking into the ship's controls and getting the hangar doors open a cinch. Pidge would cakewalk over that, where Lance or Keith would struggle to pull it together enough to have any clue of what to do.

He broaches the subject with Keith after nearly of week of backwards and forwards conversation, after carefully probing to try and guess what his reaction might be. They've gone over the plan several times by now, worked out the kinks, refined some rough areas, but they'd have to rework it a little if they got the other two in on this, and both Keith and Lance are beginning to get antsy with the idea of it being so close to achievable. Lance sends him a message late one night, lying on his bed with Hunk asleep on the other side of the room, hand lit up by the pale glow of his Link as he hesitates over the send button.

Lance: so i know this is your thing and youve been planning this forever and its rare you even let me in on it for a reason im still not sure of but am definitely not complaining about, but i want to ask you something.

Lance: how would you feel if, hypothetically, we got another guy or two in on this?

Lance: my best friend would KILL ME if i left without telling him anything, plus hes a great engineer. could be useful. then theres this other guy whos in our team whos actually the one that runs the server, hes super keen on getting out and knows heaps of stuff. hell make bypassing security measures super easy, and we both know thats our weak point.

It feels like an age before he replies, Lance sitting and stewing and staring at the dark roof until his band lights up with Keith's name, nerves twisting in his gut as he hesitates before opening it, worried he asked too much, worried he's ruined it and Keith will back him out of this, but is pleasantly surprised.

Keith: I'm thinking about it, hypothetically.

Keith: Tell me about them.

Lance grins, then pauses, thinking for a long moment about how best to describe his two team-mates. Hunk is easy enough; he loves Hunk and knows him pretty well, knows that he's kind and trustworthy and will have their backs if they need it. Pidge is a little more difficult. Lance doesn't actually know all that much about him, finding that he's often cagey and vague about anything personally related, but he's seen his skills and has seen the determination in his eyes. Nobody would be more set on getting them out of there.

Keith doesn't ask any questions as Lance explains, telling him all about them and their personalities and what he knows of their histories, a barrage of one-sided texts in monologue of how Lance sees them. Keith reads through them all slowly, taking it all in and trying to imagine what kind of people they'd be, tries to imagine travelling the stars with them. He's not very good at visualising people's personalities, as it turns out, and for a moment he considers back-tracking, deciding that no, he can't take them on, doesn't want to be stuck with them, but something smoulders in the back of his mind, remembering how Lance's eyes had looked in the caves.

It is then that Keith decides he wants to meet them, and when he says as much Lance is ecstatic, instantly beginning to formulate plans to get them all together somehow. The easiest way is to sneak Keith onto the base instead of sneaking three others out of it, which means dragging them out in the middle of the night and sneaking past night guards until they reach the edge of the base, where Lance has told Keith to meet them in an area free of patrols. Hunk is no stranger to following Lance through the halls in the dead of night, and while they've never taken Pidge before, he seems to know what he's doing, which piques Lance's curiosity like nothing else, but he doesn't have time to focus on it.

"I can't believe we get to meet your secret new friend," Hunk says as they walk through the halls, keeping his voice low as they pass closed doors. "First of all I can't believe you have a secret friend, then I can't believe we're meeting him. I'm so psyched."

"Can you be psyched quietly?" Pidge hisses back, eyes hidden by the dimmed lights reflecting off his glasses. He seemed the least enthusiastic about coming out and meeting Keith, but Lance knows that there is nobody more determined to get off world than he is, and knows he can rely on him to get him there, even if he's not a fan of the rest of them.

"Let him be excited," Lance says with an easy shrug, "It's not very often we do this. I mean, when was the last time we snuck out as a team?"

"Two weeks ago," Hunk and Pidge say in unison, remembering clearly their most recent outing. Hunk feels it necessary to remind Lance further. "You wanted to go explore the mountains or something. We were suspended for two days."

"Oh yeah," Lance mutters, but doesn't let it bother him. It's not the first time they've been caught, but it will hopefully be the last, and he's not going to let that get him down here. "Forget about that, though. Aside from being fun, this meeting is actually pretty important if you guys want to make a good impression with this guy. He seems pretty picky about who he does and doesn't like."

"And yet he likes you," Pidge jests, but for some reason it doesn't sit right with Lance. Keith has been perfectly amiable with him, but he still gets the feeling that it's not out of an actual fondness; he remembers Keith's initial reactions to him in the caves, the way his demeanour seemed to shift entirely when he got a good look at Lance, like there was something he wasn't expecting. It still bothers him.

"It's because of my amazing character and irresistible charm," he jokes back anyway, waving it off. "But enough of that. We're nearly there."

They all fall quiet as Lance leads them through a back door, sequestered between two scarcely used storage rooms, taking them out into the desert night air and around to the far side of the building. Lance had expected Keith to be here by now, and for a moment he feels a little bit let down before he catches a shuffle of movement in shadows of the building, bright red stepping out into the light cast by the moon and the distant spotlights. "I was beginning to think you wouldn't show," Keith says, crossing his arms and looking them all over, his attention drawn more to the two standing behind Lance.

"You have to be dramatic," Lance mutters, making Keith frown, before he steps aside and gestures to his two friends. "This is Hunk and Pidge. Guys, this is Keith, the mystery guy."

Pidge steps forward first, offering a hand that Keith takes and shakes. "It's nice to finally meet the man," he says, stepping aside to let Hunk follow his lead. "We've heard very little about you, which is strange coming from Lance. Most of what I've heard actually came from Hunk."

"I only told him you used to be enrolled here," Hunk affirms quickly, before Keith can get the wrong idea. "I don't actually know that much about you myself. It's great to finally meet you, though."

"Likewise," Keith says, trying not to let himself wonder about what they've been telling each other. At least Lance had honoured his promise of not sharing anything about him, and Hunk had probably only heard the same rumours that went around when he still attended. Keith has already heard most of them, and isn't inclined to ask for more. "I've heard a lot about the two of you in comparison."

"How is that fair?" Pidge mutters, looking pointedly at Lance who only offers a helpless shrug, but his sheepish grin betrays him. Luckily, he doesn't press, instead looking back to Keith. "So, what exactly is it that you're planning? All Lance has said is that you're looking at leaving the Garrison with him."

This is surprising to Keith, considering that in the little they have spoken he has come to understand Lance as someone who tells all without filter. He clearly still doesn't have a good read on the guy. "That's an understatement," he tells them, and then he brings them in to go over his plan once more, now far more solid and comprehensible since Lance has helped him flatten it out. Pidge isn't afraid to share his opinion either, pointing out flaws and questioning the vaguer parts until they all have a clear idea of exactly how it's supposed to go down. Pidge and Hunk go through some of the details of hacking into the flight bays and the ship together, ironing out what their roles will be, while Lance and Keith discuss a little more about actually piloting the thing, what their first course of action will be.

Lance has never flown in a Hopper before, hasn't actually been allowed behind the controls of a real ship yet, but he knows all the theory and has practiced in the simulators and at least Keith presumably knows what he's doing, being some sort of prodigy and all, so he tries not to let himself be nervous at the idea of being half in charge of driving a ship through the hazards of space. He has never felt so reluctant about leaving Earth before, but the pull of whatever he saw in that cave and the light of nervous excitement in his friends' eyes is enough to keep him convinced.

Once they have gone over the plan and Pidge has scanned the map that Keith had brought with him, a layout of the Garrison's east wing haphazardly drawn over in red marker, a large circle around the agreed meeting point and an even larger one around the hangar, they decide it's best to call it for the night and not risk getting caught any more than they already are. "I'll let you know when it's the best time to move," Keith tells them as he is folding the map back up and stowing it inside his jacket. "Until then, I guess just hang tight and keep an ear out, and keep yourselves ready."

They all agree and gather themselves up, ready for sneaking away their respective ways, but Lance lingers, watching Keith in the dim light for a moment. "You're awfully chipper," he notes aloud, making Keith pause and look up at him.

He seems uncomfortable with the scrutiny for a moment, and while his face betrays little of his emotion, it is clear in his movements that he's excited. "We're finally doing it," he says, light filling his eyes and making him seem more alive than Lance had ever seen while he was still at the Garrison. "We're getting out of here. We're carving our own future."

Keith: This Saturday. There's a ceremony in town, so most people will be there, leaving the Garrison pretty much empty. That's when we do it.

Keith: There will still be guards around, but not as many. We won't get another chance like this for a while.

Hunk: I heard about that, the awards ceremony. They've had flyers up all week.

Keith: Yeah, it's pretty big. It's our best shot.

Keith: I'll meet you guys in E106 as discussed, and we'll move to the hangar from there. We'll say 9pm for the meetup.

Keith: Are you all ready for this? There won't be another chance to back down.

Lance: dude i am SO ready, bring it on

Pidge: I'm not backing out. I'll be there.

Hunk: Yeah. I'm ready.

Keith: Good. Let's make it happen.

"I don't think this is a good idea." Lance glances back at Hunk as he speaks, eyes catching the dim lights of the hallway in pale blue sparks. "I know it doesn't make any difference, but I am stating this immutably for the record; this is not a good idea."

"Relax," Lance tells him, seeming far too relaxed about it himself. "We know what we're doing. You and I have snuck out plenty of times before, and Keith's practically an expert at ditching the Garrison."

"Yeah, but we've never stolen a ship before, and most of the time we get caught. Remember last summer?"

"Hey, that one was not my fault-"

"Would you two be quiet?" Keith butts in, voice hissed quietly through his teeth. Lance opens his mouth to speak, but closes it again at a gentle punch in the arm from Hunk. Keith narrows his eyes at them before turning back to keep watch around the corner, stock still bar a finger absently tapping the edge of the doorframe, the only sign that he's as nervous as they are. "He's late."

"He'll be here," Hunk assures him, "He seemed pretty determined," and then Keith holds up a hand for silence, gesturing for them to keep low, as if they weren't already. There's a tense moment as they all wait, the sound of footsteps growing as someone comes down the corridor, but they're too light to be patrol, too quick and too quiet, and then Pidge ducks around the corner into the room, immediately dropping to the ground beside them out of view of the hallway.

"Sorry," he breathes, shifting on his feet for better balance as he crouches. "Couple of officers were hanging around my planned route."

They all breathe a sigh of relief, too much on edge for these kinds of things. "That's fine," Keith tells him, "Nobody saw you?"

Pidge shakes his head, readjusting his backpack. "Not that I'm aware of. I don't want to jeopardise this any more than you."

Keith nods, and then he's checking the hallway again, making sure their route is clear. "Alright. We stick to the plan, head straight for the hangars. I'll need you two ready to go the moment we get there," he says to Pidge and Hunk, who both nod in response. "Lance and I will handle the rest. We only get one chance to do this. Ready?"

"As ever," Lance beams, and then Keith gives the signal.

It is certainly not the first time any of them have snuck around the Garrison in the dead of night, but tonight feels distinctly different for all of them. Failure will get them suspended or expelled or, in Keith's case possibly arrested, but success will take them off-world for the first time in their lives, to the stars and beyond, to the worlds they have all been training to see. It sits heavy in Lance's gut, but it makes him feel light, giddy at the thought of leaving Earth, all he's ever known, breaking into the great expanse of space to try and track down a legend, the spirit of something that now haunts his dreams and dogs him in his shadows.

They move quietly through the halls, taking the shortest and quietest route from the classroom to the hangar, ducking under windows and slipping into doorways at any hint of footsteps, all of them tense and on edge but determined, following through with weeks of planning and promises between them. As Keith assumed the halls are practically deserted, only a couple of guards and staff around, but the hangar will be a different story; they are always well guarded, even in times of events like this, and will be the most difficult to get into.

Pidge has them set to enter through one of the service doors from the outside, taking them directly into the floor of the hangar instead of through the survey rooms and main corridors they would otherwise have to go through. It's easy enough following darkened hallways through the east wing and avoiding spotlights as they cross the grounds to the outside of the hangar, the others hanging back while Pidge ducks ahead to the control panel. They watch between him and their surroundings as he pulls some sort of device from his pocket, hooking it into the door's control pad and typing something in before the latch pops open (far too easily, Lance thinks, he can't help being impressed by that).

Pidge gives them a thumbs up, disconnecting the device as the other three move forward to slip through the open door into the hangar, Pidge pulling it gently shut behind them. The hangar is as wide and cavernous as Lance remembers from their first tours of the institution, the high curved ceiling seeming almost like the sky above the few craft sitting beneath it, huge and daunting on their own. They quickly spot the craft they marked as theirs, one of the old Star Hoppers used for training cadets in their initial flights back before they had a fund increase and bought newer models, now sitting lonely and unused. Nobody will miss it, and while it isn't great, it'll get them through space well enough.

They're wary of the survey room as they move through the hangar, keeping low behind the craft and cargo crates lining the edges of the hold to keep out of sight of the guards sitting bored behind the glass of the room against the wall above them and the pale spotlights that fade into each other from their sources along the high convexed roof. There aren't any guards on patrol in the hangar grounds itself, which makes their risk of getting caught upright that much slimmer, but there is a chance that they'll be able to cut the four of them off if they get spotted too soon, and it dogs Lance's every thought as they move forward, following Keith's direction and staying in the shadows as they move toward their Hopper, inching closer and closer to their goal.

They stop once they reach the ship, crouched against its far side out of view of the guards, looking to Pidge for the signal. He holds up a hand when they turn to him, focused almost entirely on his hand-held device, fingers tapping furiously at lines of code flickering across it until he pauses, glances up with a raised eyebrow. The others all look between each other, Hunk and Keith and Lance, then back to Pidge.

Lance gives the thumbs up, and then it is turmoil.

The hangar flashes red barely a second after Pidge presses the button, the ship's hatch grinding open punctuated by the shrill wail of Garrison alarms, and the damn thing couldn't open slow enough, could it, the wide cargo door lowering for them in what feels like an age and a moment. The instant it is low enough for them to climb through they jump back into movement, stepping around the side of the ship and into view for just long enough to jump into the still moving hatch, sparing nary a second as they clamber for the front of the ship and its cockpit, falling into their respective seats as the surprised guard finally gets over its surprise.

"Attention," the PA shouts at them, just as Hunk hits the button to shut the door again. "You are in violation of Garrison property and are unauthorised for use of ship PH-KLR943. Exit the vehicle at once and surrender yourselves, or we will open fire."

"Pidge," Lance says, panic in his voice as Keith and Hunk go through the startup procedures, "I think we need those hangar doors open."

"On it," he replies curtly, ripping a cord out from somewhere in the console he has somehow found the time to tear open and plugging it into his hand-held. There is a satisfying rumble as Hunk gets the engines online, the ship shuddering alive with power and quaking around them, seeming as eager as they are to get off the ground and fly. Hunk gives them the thumbs-up, and Keith and Lance take hold of the controls, steering and coordinates and stabilisers and getting her up off the ground, tipping a little as it first lifts before Keith evens it out, keeps them steady.

"Exit the vehicle at once," the guards repeat, voice coming over the low grind of what Lance remembers from the initial demonstration as the defence system, guns mounted along the walls designed to stun, or to kill. "Failure to comply will be met with open fire."

"We really need that door open," Lance sings nervously, watching as Keith turns them toward the solid wall of the hangar doors, engines roaring generously beneath them. She has more power than he expected.

"One second," Pidge bites back through grit teeth, working as fast as he can but not fast enough.

"I don't think we have a-"

"There!" he cries before Lance can finish, and as promised the doors begin to slide open, parting before them like the Red Sea to reveal the desert night and the stars above. There is a heavy burst to their left as warning shots are fired, startling them all, but Keith doesn't let it distract him; the moment the doors are wide enough, he lurches the controls forward and the ship responds in kind, snapping forwards into motion much faster than they'd expected and hurtling them through the opening, bright flashes of fire following them out into the sky.

"You're crazy!" Lance shouts at him, struggling to keep up with the sudden lurch in speed. Keith only grins, finally back in his element, and then he yanks the controls back. The ship pulls sharply up, up, up, shooting straight up from the earth like an arrow with no holds barred, as determined as its pilot to be free.

There is a tell-tale shudder as they pull through the atmosphere, and then there is only stars, billions of them sprawled out before them and the Earth's pale glow behind them. The cockpit falls silent, breaths held as they take it all in, wide-eyed at their narrow escape and the realisation that they did it, they succeeded. The moment feels heavy, seeming to last an eternity, bright with the blooming joy of success.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Lance breathes, breaking the silence, letting his hands slip from the controls and a grin stretch across his face, "Welcome to the final frontier."