Work Text:
"Assassin"
Keith peeked around the corner, his grip tightening on his blaster. His violet eyes darted from one side of the adjoining corridor to the other, and seeing no one, the boy tiptoed around the corner and into the shadows of the next corridor. He was trying to blend into the shadows to avoid detection. It was one of the rules. Avoid detection and hit his targets. His targets were the other members of his pack, Kolivan, Antok, Thace, Ulaz, and Regris. Each one was armed with a blaster, but the blasters didn't fire lasers or lead bullets but vividly colored balls of paint; a different color for each member of the pack. Kolivan had red, Antok had blue, Thace had purple, Ulaz had green, Regris had orange, and Keith had white.
Keith had been very adept at avoiding getting hit and was devoid of any color on his clothes. All of the other members of his pack had other colors marking their clothes but not Keith.
Suddenly, a flash of blue flew past his head, splattering on the wall behind him. Keith's eyes landed on the largest member of his pack, who had his blaster aimed at Keith. Keith grinned and escaped into a nearby vent. He quietly crawled through the ventilation system. Knowing he couldn't stay in there, he located an exit and dropped out of the vent system, landing a shot on Kolivan, who just grinned and leveled his blaster at the kit.
Keith dove out of the way, only to be hit by an orange paint ball. Keith paused in shock as he had been shot for the first time by his pack brother, looking down at his chest. It was centered on his torso. He lifted his head to meet Regris's grinning face. His expression changed from shock to mischievous in less than a tick, and Keith shot his brother and their leader before bounding out of the room.
Kolivan and Regris looked at themselves and then each other before turning to look out the empty door. They heard the pretend outraged voices of the rest of the pack before they grinned, Regris laughing. The youngest kit was good at this.
%%%
The Paladins were of conflicting opinions about joint training sessions with the Blades. Keith, Shiro, and Allura loved them. Pidge and Hunk would rather be messing with tech, and Lance didn't care for them, since the Blades were worse taskmasters than Allura had been when they first arrived at the castle.
Lance was dragging his feet as he made his way to the training deck. He shot a glare at his team mates, especially Keith. He was almost bouncing on his feet like he couldn't wait to get to training. His glare sharpened at Keith's giddiness.
"If you are so excited to train, why don't you go ahead of us?"
Keith grinned. "I'm only excited because I know what training exercise we are going to be doing."
Lance sighed. "Sounds like Mullet all right. Excited about training."
Keith frowned. "You are going to eat those words when you find out what we're doing."
"We'll see about that." With Lance having said that, the group entered the training deck and was surprised to see all five of the Blades in there with blasters in their claws and six more laying at their feet.
Keith chirped and grabbed one of the blasters. He checked the color of his ammo and was pleasantly surprised to see that he got the same color he always had at home. He looked up at his pack and grinned.
"Welcome, Paladins. Please select a blaster for the training exercise," Kolivan stated.
The other five Paladins (including Allura) quickly dispersed the remaining blasters amongst themselves.
"Now, please check the color of your ammo and state what color you have," Thace continued.
"I have pink," Allura said.
"Yellow," Hunk spoke up.
"I ended up with tan," Shiro added.
"I got magenta," Pidge remarked.
Lance looked at his ammo. "Ooo. I have aqua."
Kolivan replied, "Red."
Antok retorted, "Blue."
"Purple," Thace added.
"Green," Ulaz acknowledged.
Regris responded with, "Orange."
Keith grinned. "White."
Lance's eyes widened in realization. "Are we doing a shooting exercise?!"
Keith's grin grew bigger. "Told you so, Sharpshooter."
"I'll give you that one, Mullet. So," Lance twirled his blaster. "When do we start?"
%%%
The Blades realized they may have made a mistake inviting the Paladins, specifically Lance, to join this...game of theirs. If they thought Keith was good, then Lance was on another level altogether. He shot everyone, even Keith sported Lance's aqua colored ammo! He did this all without getting hit himself. However, it went from a fun exercise to a game of cat and mouse with Lance as the cat.
Kolivan and Antok exchanged looks of dread as they edged along the corridor. They had decided to team up together in order to not get taken down by the Blue Paladin like Thace and Ulaz were. They had lost sight of Keith and Regris, but they had to still be in the castle.
They saw the Yellow and Green Paladins in the corridor. The Yellow Paladin was collapsed, covered in all of the colors of everyone's ammo. The Green Paladin was escaping into the ventilation system. They noticed she had spots of color as well. They shook their heads at the futility of her actions. She couldn't stay in there, and when she came out, she would get tagged by Lance...and maybe Keith.
A little further down the corridor, hushed voices could be heard. From what Kolivan and Antok could hear, it appeared that Shiro and Allura had also teamed up, but to take down Lance, they needed to keep their voices down, so he wouldn't hear their plan.
They continued to creep along the corridor, which was strangely quiet and darker than normal. The Blades weren't worried as they had excellent night vision. Somehow, they missed Lance creeping up on them.
"I win." Lance pulled the trigger.
Fin