I don't own Voltron: Legendary Defender. Frankly, I'm not sure who does. But nevertheless, I hope you enough this.

She/her pronouns for Pidge.

Rampant

Okay. So Lance knew he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but he also knew that nine times out of ten, you don't need a sharp tool. You need a pliers, or a hammer, or a vice grips or a router or… just, y'know, something else? Lance took woodshop, and while his grades may have been less than stellar, he could count on one hand the amount of times his teacher had let his students use anything sharp.

He was also pretty sure that not letting Pidge talk to strangers was a good thing. Especially on a planet where they were forced to camp out in the woods in the name of diplomacy. There was a campfire and there were no s'mores and if that wasn't a bad omen, what was?

"I can look after myself! I don't need you-" she jabbed him in the chest with her sharp little finger "-to waltz in and act like you're supposed to be my bodyguard!"

No one ever really talked about it, but the fact was that Pidge was fourteen, which made her anywhere between five years and several millennia younger than anyone else on the ship. It was natural to look out for the baby of the family right? They kind of were supposed to be her bodyguards, it was sort of an unwritten rule.

And apart from that, Pidge was tiny. And a girl. And wore glasses that made Lance worry someone might try beating on her for her lunch money or something. Not that she had any lunch money anymore, and not that there was anyone around to beat her up for her hypothetical lunch money, but still. She looked like an easy target.

It wasn't like Pidge was a weak link or anything! She was just… Vulnerable.

He knew the others agreed with him. Mostly in their silence. The fact that they weren't backing Pidge up spoke volumes. Even when she had glared at Shiro with righteous ferocity he hadn't said anything. Now she was mad at all of them, but it was all directed at Lance.

He could take this blow, for the team.

"I was just talking to him!"

"He was interested in more than just talking!" Lance retorted. He'd seen how that creep had lit up. He was delighted that a pretty girl had deigned to pay him any attention. And Pidge was pretty. And a girl.

"So what? So was I!"

Lance choked, whatever reply he might've mustered lost on his tongue. He wasn't the only one to be surprised by this… declaration. Hunk was staring, agape, and Shiro paled, his scar standing out in stark contrast. Keith was probably shocked too, but Lance wasn't going to look at him to check.

Pidge's cheeks were stained pink and she looked absolutely furious.

"Whatever! The point is, I am just as much a paladin as you are, just as able to look after myself, and I definitely have more game!"

And with that low blow, Pidge turned on her heel and headed into the forest, pushing her way through the foliage. Lance could hear Keith snigger and mutter "vicious" but he shut up pretty quickly when Pidge glanced back to glare at him. At them all really, but mostly at Keith for laughing at her fury.

"I'm going for a walk."

It had been about an hour since Pidge had stalked off into the woods, and everyone was starting to get a little nervous. It was a long time to be gone, and what if she couldn't find her way back? It was dark out there. Really dark.

Shiro had given Lance a vague sort of 'let her walk it off' piece of advice, but even he looked like he might be getting worried now. How much time were you supposed to give someone alone in the dark, scary woods full of monsters? Like, yeah, she needed some space to like, cool off or whatever, but how much space?

Probably not more than fifteen minutes before you got to thinking she was kidnapped right? That seemed like an appropriate amount of time. Twenty, tops. A marker that had long since passed, by the way.

"Pidge should be back by now – I know she's mad, but she's not stupid," Keith said, standing up. "I'm going to look for her, before she gets eaten or something."

Lance was loath to agree with Keith, but it had already been running through his head, so what else was he supposed to do? Disagree? Leave Pidge to die of exposure?

"She's not going to get eaten!" Hunk looked over to Shiro for confirmation on this fact.

"I'm sure she just lost track of time guys," Shiro said, raising his hands in a placating manner. "She's not going to get eaten."

"But we're still going to look for her, right?"

"Oh , yeah, of course we are," Shiro said. "It's way past her bed time."

Lance sniggered.

"It's way past everyone's bed time," Shiro corrected himself, eliciting a groan from Lance.

They started by heading in the same direction that Pidge had, Shiro taking the lead and using some kind of innate Pidge Hunting instinct to track her. That and she'd left a pretty clear trail where she had stomped through the foliage. Then came Lance, then Hunk, and Keith was bringing up the rear.

"Pidge!" Lance called. She couldn't have gotten too far on those tiny legs of hers. "Pidge? Where are you?"

"Yeah, c'mon Pidge, it's time for bed!" Hunk said.

They carried on like that for a while, following the clear trail she'd left and calling her name loudly into the dark forest. Man, was it spooky out here.

"Shiro, Keith isn't pulling his weight!" Lance said. His voice was starting to hurt a little. "He hasn't called out for Pidge in ages."

"Keith, we all have to- where's Keith?"

"We lost Keith?" Hunk looked around frantically. "I swear guys he was just here! He was right behind me!"

"Good riddance."

"This is no time for joking Lance! Pidge is missing, and now Keith is gone too!"

"Oh my god. They're picking us off on by one," Hunk started gnawing on his nails, a nervous habit that he was supposed to be breaking. "Shiro! They're picking us off one by one!"

"Let's not jump to conclusions," Shiro said, then, unconvincingly: "Maybe Kith just fell behind!"

"As if that jerk would ever- Hunk don't cry," Lance said, "C'mon buddy, I'm sure they're fine. Or else Keith fell in a hole and we never have to see him again? Eh? Eh?" Lance dug his elbow into Hunk's side until he cracked a grin.

"Lance?" Hunk asked.

"Yeah, Hunk?"

"You know how you just insulted Keith?"

"Yeah? And it was great? What's the problem?"

"When has Shiro ever… let that slide?"

"Never, but Shiro's… not… here… " Lance blanched. "SHIRO!"

"Lance, they really are picking us off one by one!" Hunk clung to him. Lance was tempted to cling back, but he resisted the urge for almost thirty whole seconds.

"We'll be alright Hunk! Just hold on to me, alright?" Lance said. "Now let's head back to the campsite nice and slow and call Allura to come rescue us in the castleship and help find the others. Hunk everything is going to be-"

Black. Everything was black.

When Lance woke up he was groggy and his head ached like he'd been drinking some of Marty's very own home-distilled Garrison Brew. And he didn't have to remind anyone, but the fumes of that alone were enough to knock a donkey flat on its ass.

"Shiro!" Keith hissed. "Lance is awake!"

"I'm not sure I agree with that statement" Lance groaned, and rolled over to fall back asleep. "Ask me in fifteen minutes."

"Lance! This is serious!" Keith said, shaking him awake. Violently. "You'll be fine in a minute or two."

"Alright, alright!" Lance shoved Keith away. "I know you'd be lost without Voltron's best pilot. I'm not going anywhe-re ar we anyway?"

"From the looks of things, we're in a hole in the ground," Shiro said.

"That's all you got?"

Hunk was coming around that the same time, Shiro fighting to keep him awake. He flailed in Shiro's arms, before rolling over and puking his guts out onto the charmingly rustic dirt floor. Shiro backed up pretty quickly, not that Lance could blame him. Hunk blowing chunks was not something you wanted to be in range of.

"Shiro?" Lance glanced around. "Where's Pidge?"

"She's not here Lance," Shiro said quietly. "We don't know where she is – she's either still wandering in the forest or whoever got us, got her too."

The four of them fell into silence, absorbing this information. Whoever had taken them down had taken them all down. There was no way that they'd missed one small teenaged girl right?

They huddled together, wondered what happened to Pidge while they tried to stay focused long enough to formulate an escape plan. Hatching plans, let me tell you, is not easy when you've been drugged and while you're pretty sure there's only one of each paladin, the visual evidence against it is staggering.

"They ate her! Pidge is dead and we're going to be next!"

They had gotten to the 'give up all home and mourn their fallen comrade' part of the journey. The journey being a metaphorical journey, because they were all at the bottom of a hole. And they were all still super high from whatever they had been knocked out with. Lance was trying to braid Keith's hair.

Keith was not putting up enough of a fight to stop the hairstyling session.

Hunk was watching attentively, but Shiro was the only who was still somewhat focused on escaping. He escaped a Galra prisonship. This was a goddamn hole in the ground.

The almighty paladins of Voltron, taken down by a goddamn hole in the ground.

It was humiliating.

Embarrassing.

If Shiro had a bayard, he'd be tempted to hand it in. But for one, they'd all been disarmed, and for another, he didn't even have one in the first place. He was the head of Voltron, and the torso. That was a lot of parts of a giant robotic conglomeration to be.

It impressed Lance enough that he ceased to braid for long enough that Keith slipped out of his grasp. He pounced on Hunk instead, who had enough hair to braid if you knew how to do fancy braids, which Lance did.

Someone else might've been concerned about what braiding might do to his rep, but Lance was more worried about his impending death, and becoming concerned that his closest friends (even Keith, that jerk-faced jerk) might never know how much he excelled at braiding before they all died in a hole in the ground.

Anyway, all these thoughts were going through his head, and he started crying, because Pidge was dead and she was never going to know that he fucking killed it when it came to braiding hair. Then a rope hit him in the face.

"Ow," Lance said. Then. "Guys! Look at this rope! It came from the sky!"

"Don't be dense Lance, ropes don't just – that's a fucking rope," Keith tugged on the rope to confirm its ropey existence. "Shiro! Look at this sky rope!"

"Guys. That's just… a regular rope," Hunk said. "Someone threw us down a rope. So we can, like climb out."

"Okay guys, new plan. We climb the rope, we find Pidge, we rescue Pidge, we beat the crap outta whoever hurt Pidge, we go home and eat goo. Good? Good. Hands in," Shiro put his fist in the centre of the tiny circle. More of a square, really. The others stacked their fists on top of his. "One. Two. Three. Brea-!"

"That's really sweet and all guys, but could you just climb up the rope already?"

"Pidge?"

"You're alive!"

"Yes, now can you just climb the rope already?" Pidge hissed. "I want to go to bed."

They scrambled up the rope as quickly as they could, dog-piling onto Pidge as soon as they were out of the hole. The sun was setting in behind the trees, but it provided enough light that they could see that the alien camp had been completely decimated. There were unconscious and dead aliens everywhere. Pidge had deep, dark shadows under her eyes, and everyone's bayards clipped to her belt.

She handed them out, and Lance hugged his.

"How long have you been awake?" Shiro asked, his voice laden with concern, like he hadn't just spent almost a whole day knocked out in a hole in the ground.

"You've been gone since last night, and I didn't… so I guess around forty hours?" Pidge yawned, grim determination leeching from her eyes now that she'd mostly rescued the other four paladins.

"How did you? How did they miss you?" Lance asked, Pidge's yawned agan, this time cracking her jaw.

"Probably something got to do with not drawing attention to myself by yelling in the middle of the forest at night. I don't know. It could have been anything really," Pidge's drooping eyelids may have been misleading, but the girl was not ready to cut any slack just yet. "Now we're going home before anyone wakes up and seeks vengeance for a dismembered loved one."

"You didn't really dismember anyone, did you?"

"I don't know. Probably. They were going to eat you guys, I wasn't really thinking too much," Pidge stifled a yawn. "Does anyone feel like carrying me home?"

So I guess that was my first foray into the land of voltron fanfiction. Unless I write a Star Trek AU, I cannot imagine second one at this point but who know? Not this chick. Please R&R.