-A few minutes later-

God, I'm useless, Lance thought to himself as the guilt tore at him. Pidge, Keith, Shiro, Allura and Coran were ranting at him, and this only made his thoughts worse. I can't do anything right. I was so close to saving Hunk, and because I wasn't fast enough, he's stuck in a Galra ship! He's captive there, all because of me.

"How did you not see that burst from the ion cannon?!" Allura said incredulously. "It's large and it's glowing, for quiznak's sake! How did you not notice it?!"

Pidge was furious as well. "And also, if you would've gotten out of the way, I would've been able to use my invisibility to sneak up on the Galra and shove him out of the beam's way!" She paused to take a breath, but then immediately jumped in again. "But no! You had to keep going after him, ruining all of my chances!" Tears caused by frustration crept into her eyes as she said, "He's gone because of you!"

Silence weighed down on the room as all of them digested what had been said.

"Uh, maybe you should return to your rooms, paladins," Coran suggested awkwardly to break the icy silence. "After all, you're going to need your diligence tomorrow when we begin the search. Everyone's just a little tense right now - "

Shiro shook his head. "No, Coran, we don't have time for rest. We have to begin now." He turned to everyone else, determined. "Don't worry. We will find him. But Pidge, is there any way that we can track the Galra fleet without taking that witch up on her offer?"

"Yes." At her words, the mood seemed to brighten, even more so when she continued with, "Before they went into hyperspace, I was able to discover something about my lion - when I plug my bayard into the slot, I can shoot trackers out of her mouth. So, I stuck a tracker on the ship just in case I wasn't able to succeed in getting him out without using it."

"Fantastic, number five!" Coran exclaimed. He rubbed his hands together enthusiastically. "Now we can get started!"

Lance zoned out as Shiro, Pidge, Allura and Coran collaborated with each other on all things technical. Shiro was there mainly to lead and keep everyone on track while everyone else plugged the coordinates into the castle's navigation system.

That left Keith and Lance standing by themselves away from the rest of the group, neither one looking at each other.

"Hey, are. . . . you okay?" Keith asked. His voice was sort of hesitant and surprisingly gentle. Even though he and Lance weren't the best of friends, their rivalry was starting to smooth out, and he wanted to keep it that way. He also knew that what Pidge said to Lance must have hurt him a lot because he was gazing down at the floor as if it was the most interesting thing in the world.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Lance replied, sighing. "I'm just. . . . tired, that's all." His gaze met Keith's as he said, "If the team asks for me, tell them that I'm going to be in my room." Then he turned on his heel and walked out of the control room, leaving Keith staring after him.

. . . .

Lance walked through one of the castleship's hallways, trying his best to ignore his feelings. Despite his resistance, he couldn't help the few sobs that escaped from him. He held his arms around himself as he cried brokenly, his feet dragging behind him.

He pressed his hand on the pad outside his door, tears still making their way down his cheeks, ready to retire for the day. He needed a break before he could go back to hiding his depression.

Abruptly, all the lights in the hallway went off, plunging it in complete darkness. Even the door stopped, halfway opened.

Lance let out a startled cry, almost falling backward as he felt for the wall out of instinct. As soon as his hand connected with it, he relaxed a little. What the hell? He thought, glancing around for the slightest hint of light. Unfortunately, he didn't find any. He couldn't even see his hand in front of his face. Why?! Why now?! What's happening?!

He inhaled deep, rattling breaths, trying to calm himself down. It didn't work that much. His body was in enough emotional strain already, and he didn't want to add panic to the list.

Think this through, okay Lance? He said to himself, feeling around for the edge of the door. Do you have anything that could be used as a light in your room? After a moment of consideration, he answered himself. I think I remember Allura giving me an Altean version of a flashlight. He sighed. The hard part is going to be finding it.

He made his way through the door, turning sideways slightly to fit through the gap between it and the wall. But then he immediately tripped on the computer system that he had set up on the floor, doing an accidental faceplant into the hard metal.

"Quiznak," he breathed out loud, rubbing his nose. He had obviously underestimated the difficulty of this task. Then he sneezed from the dust that covered the computer, accumulated because of his lack of time to use it. He was either training, eating, or crying into his pillow, and that tight schedule left no time for anything else.

Lance carefully and deliberately made his way to his bed in the total darkness, reaching his hand out in front of him to hopefully prevent him from bumping into anything. When his shins knocked into the bed, he grabbed at thin air, trying to pinpoint the shelf where he thought the object he was looking for was.

His hand brushed a thick metal rectangle, and he went back and grabbed onto it. His fingers fumbled around its surface, looking for a switch, but he couldn't find one. This worried him until he remembered that the Altean tech was voice-activated. After speaking the words "turn on" above it, a ray of blueish light sprung from it.

Against the blackness, it was so bright that Lance winced, especially because he had been holding it the wrong way. He flipped it around and then trained it on the floor, checking for possible obstacles in his way.

He dodged the wires coming from the computers and then slid through the door's gap, heading toward the control room, where the rest of the team was gathered when he left.

I'm pretty sure that the team wasn't prepared for an event like this, so for once, I think they'll actually need me, he mused. Plus, I'll be able to find the reason behind this blackout.

A few feet from the door to the control room, he heard voices floating through it.

"Allura, can you get anything up and running?" a voice that sounded like Pidge shouted.

"No, I can't! I think the castle has just been working on emergency power this whole time," responded Allura. "The ion cannon must've taken much more energy to deflect than we originally thought. Also, we've been using the pods to heal the aliens we rescued, so it's no wonder that we eventually ran out."

Lance stepped into the room, all suave and confident because he knew they couldn't see his red and puffy eyes. "Don't worry, Princess, your savior is here," he said. He swung the light into the room and his teammates gasped.

"Where did you find that?" Allura asked. "We've been looking all over for a light! How did you find one before we did?"

Lance shrugged, but then realized that they couldn't see him. "I remembered that you gave one to me. . . . sometime, I forgot exactly when."

"Now that we've got some light, we should try and figure out what to do to restore power," Shiro said. "The Kirins that we rescued are probably scared and confused right now, so we should tell them what's going on."

"I'd agree, Shiro, but the thing is that I don't think there's any other way to restore power besides waiting," Coran stated dejectedly. "The castle is run by a Balmeran Crystal, which are very powerful and can recharge on their own, but even then, they have a limit to how much energy they can store, so it will take a while before the castle is able to function properly again." He sighed. "And I thought that Pop Pop Wimbleton's design was flawless. He incorporated a backup power source, but I guess not even he could have been prepared for this."

After a few seconds, Keith pointed out something that had been shoved to the back of their minds due to the chaos of everything that had happened: "What about Hunk?"

Silence settled over the room.

"Without power, we can't track the coordinates Pidge gave us," Keith continued. "As we know of, that's our only way to get to Hunk without taking Haggar's deal, and even if we wanted to, we couldn't accept it anyway because our communications won't work either."

Pidge's voice wafted out of a corner of the room as she said, "There has to be another way."

"Yeah, there has to be," Lance whispered, all traces of former happiness gone from his voice.

Everyone else was quiet. So quiet, in fact, that a pin drop would have sounded deafening. They all wanted to believe with all of their heart that they could just will the power back on and continue the search, but logic ruined this for them. None of them wanted to be the one to break this fragile belief, but one of them had to.

Shiro stepped forward into the light, a sad smile on his face. "As much as I know we all don't want to - and believe me, I'd rather be saying anything else right now - Hunk is going to have to wait. We can't get to him and he can't get to us, so for now there's nothing else we can do. But as soon as the power comes back on, I promise you that rescuing him will be the first thing we do."

The flashlight wavered in Lance's hand as it shook slightly. Alternating waves of anger and sadness clashed inside him, and he didn't know what to do with it. "I won't accept that." His voice had a dangerous, almost threatening edge to it that scared the other paladins. "I won't accept that, do you hear me?!" He clenched his fists. "If one of us were stranded out in space, no matter the circumstances, Hunk would always come to rescue us, even if he had to fight through hell and back! No matter what, he would save us, so don't you think we should do the same for him?!" Tears caused from his mix of emotions made tracks down his face. "I don't care how we do it, but we have to save him, and if you won't find a way, I will."

With that, he stormed out of the control room, throwing the flashlight onto the floor as he went. He didn't need the light, because he knew exactly where he was going - the Blue Lion's hangar.

. . . .

After Lance's dramatic exit, the control room was once again plunged into the uncomfortable quiet. Shiro followed the beam of light to the flashlight, which he picked off the ground.

"Perhaps we should leave Lance alone for awhile," He proposed, and the team heartily agreed. They all knew that besides Pidge, Lance had taken Hunk's capture the hardest. "Since I have the one remaining light, I'll escort each of you to your rooms so you can see, and then I'll head to the pods. The Kirins are still gathered in there, and I have the duty to notify them of everything. We'll meet back together when the castle's power comes back on."

"But who knows how long that could be?" said Keith.

"Well, I'd estimate around about a week in Earth time," Coran informed him. "We have enough oxygen stored up to last us that long, so we don't have to worry about running out."

Keith groaned. "That's just great," he huffed. "I mean, the not running out of oxygen part is great, but the other part isn't. So we're going to be all alone, in the dark, and bored out of our minds. Sounds like a totally normal idea of how I want to spend my time."

"That sounds exactly just like you. After all, you're the emo of our group."

"I'm not emo, Pidge!" Keith barked.

Pidge snorted. "Sure."

"Why you - !"

"Be quiet, both of you!" Allura's shout caught them both off guard. "This is not a time for arguing! Trying situations like this should be where our teamwork is at its best, but instead we're fighting!" She sighed, but her voice still held an edge to it as she said, "I get that everyone's patience has been whittled down to almost nothing, but enough is enough!"

"Allura's right, paladins," remarked Coran. He kept his voice as light as he could to distract the paladins and princess. "Just think of this as a little break from your hectic lives. And, side note: you probably shouldn't go wandering the castle when it's pitch black without a light, because it's so big that if you weren't able to memorize your route, you would definitely get lost. Oh, and here, one more thing - " Coran handed them seven tubes of green food goo each. "If you get hungry, eat one of these. They'll last you a full day, plus they taste great too!"

Pidge squeezed the tubes, and her doubt grew. "Are you sure that these are for for human consumption, because I'm not."

"Don't listen to her, Coran," Shiro butted in. "I think these will be very helpful, so thanks." When he spoke next, he addressed the team at large: "Okay, now follow me. I'll lead you to your rooms, you can get comfortable, and then you'll just have to sit and wait. Don't think about going anywhere - especially you, Keith, I'm talking to you - and I'll see you when the lights turn back on."

(A/N): Please ignore the other version of this same chapter that is posted after this one, because they're exactly the same. I'm aware of its presence and I want to fix it, but I don't know how to, so. . . . this is the best I can do. I don't know why it does that, unfortunately :'(

Is it just my phone that it's happening to or not? Whatever, either way, I still wanted to tell you. Okay bye :)