I Feel the Need...

Self-defense: Totally Quill’s fault. I recklessly mentioned something, she replied, and before I knew it, it was too late. *evil grin* That’s why this is her birthday present.

Disclaimer: WEP owns Voltron, for which I should think the boys would be thankful…

I Feel the Need…

“Why didn’t you tell me about the mating imperative?” the girl wailed.

Allura rolled her eyes. “I did, you twit! That was one of the first things I warned you about! You just weren’t listening!” Her voice dropped to a disgusted mutter. “I think at the time, you were staring down at your breasts like you thought they were some horrible monster that would devour you.”

“Well, it wasn’t my breasts, was it?” The words were filled with resentment and fear and perhaps a hint of awe. “It was my stupid uterus, and all those damned hormones kicking in, and I just couldn’t help it! I just felt… like… you know, so…”

Despite the ingenuous look on her face, Allura’s grin couldn’t be called anything but evil. “Sexy? Ready to pounce on a man, any man, regardless of orientation—yours or theirs—and let him have his wicked way with you?”

“Princess!” Allura’s bold and daring taunt brought a flurry of embarrassed and disapproving looks her way, not the least from Doctor Gorma and the patient currently perched on the examination table in the castle’s infirmary.

“What?” she asked innocently. “It’s only the truth.” Then she eyed the red-faces of the Voltron Force, as they fidgeted uncomfortably. “If you don’t believe me, maybe you should try it out for a month or two. You know, just to see what it’s like for a woman. PMS and cramps and…”

A loud collective “Eeeew!” burst from the four young men. As one, they shuddered and cowered back against the wall, their faces glowing even redder, if that were possible. Pidge even covered his ears and closed his eyes. He was clearly praying under his breath.

The Princess rolled her eyes. “Again, that’s just the unvarnished truth. It’s what a woman’s cycle is all about, you know—the need to breed. And, of course, in some cases, there’s no thought whatsoever of the consequences.” She eyed the patient, who ducked her head and blushed prettily.

“I was just… overwhelmed. I mean, you know, it’s… well, Princess, you know what it’s like!” The girl looked up at her, eyes wide with seeming innocence.

Allura nodded, giving that very evil smirk again. “Yes. And yet, somehow, I’m not the one who is in the family way, am I?”

The girl groaned and covered her face with her hands. “Good God, how do you deal with that every month?”

“Honestly?” Allura tried to look concerned and reassuring, she really did… but it didn’t quite work. “Women’s brains don’t get overwhelmed by what their bodies are doing. We’re rather unlike men in that respect.” She pretended not to notice the glares she received from various males around the infirmary, and crossed her arms. “So now, we know why you didn’t have your—ahem—your monthly time—your first monthly time, I might add,” she continued, raising her voice slightly to be heard over the resumed chorus of gagging noises, and watched in glee as the girl trembled in front of her. “So congratulations! You’re going to be a mother. Now… who’s the father, Lance?”

Lance—the girl huddled on the examination table—shivered at the demand and tried to disappear into herself.

Before she could even open her mouth to reply to Allura’s question, it was answered by someone else.

“I am.”

Actually, it was a full quartet of someones else.

Those members of the Voltron Force that were currently male looked at each other in confusion and dawning suspicion.

Allura sighed heavily and raised an eyebrow at Lance. “It seems you’ve got some explaining to do, missy.”

Lance gave her a sheepish look through thick lashes, flicked her eyes toward the rest of the team, then dropped her gaze once more, hiding behind the fall of long brown hair. “Um. Oops?”

“Oops is when you spill some milk on the counter. No, no, no. This has gone far beyond oops, Lance.

“And you four!” Before the other boys could think that they had escaped her wrath, Allura whirled upon them, and caught them in the act of sneaking from the room. “I know half of you had no interest in Lance when he was a he, and I know that the rest of you shouldn’t have any interest in her now that she’s a she! There’s going to be some explaining from you as well!”

A great deal of red-faced muttering and glaring went on, but none of the four actually said anything aloud.

“Lance? Now would be an excellent time,” Allura prodded sternly.

Already wan, Lance went a little paler. “Uh, Princess, can I just…”

“NO!”

Lance jumped at the unexpected volume the Princess produced. Apparently, Her Royal Highness wasn’t going to give time out for nausea. And she started tapping her foot to emphasize the point.

“All right, all right!” Lance looked down at her hands. “Okay. Right after I got hit with that transmoging ray or whatever Pidge is calling it today—”

“That soon?” Allura’s jaw sagged open in disbelief.

“It’s a transmogrification beam,” Pidge inserted helpfully, then quickly ducked his head when Allura swiveled to stare at him.

Lance rolled her eyes. “No, not that soon! Sheesh. Right after I got hit with that… thingamajig, I didn’t know what was going on. You brought me to see Doctor Gorma, he checked me out, and after you gave me that wonderfully thorough lesson on the facts of life, I decided I was going to lock myself in my room.”

“Well, that obviously went just according to plan,” Allura muttered. “So what happened?”

Lance fidgeted, twining a lock of hair around her finger and biting her lip until it was a bright red.

From behind her, Allura heard a couple of masculine groans and some shifting. “Never mind,” she said and rolled her eyes. “I think I can see what happened.”

One of the boys hissed, “See? How could we...” but one imperiously raised hand silenced him.

Lance continued to squirm. “But after a week and a half or so, I just couldn’t. I needed to get out… And I just don’t know what came over me. I started to flirt with Sven…”

“Puushed me down and stuck yur tongue down my throat is more like it,” Sven muttered.

“And after a few minutes, we kind of ducked into one of the empty rooms…”

“Yu dragged me…”

Lance’s gaze took on a dreamy cast, and she sighed happily. “It was so very nice… I’d never known it was so intense for a woman…”

“Lance. Please. Move along. Your next conquest?”

Lance flushed hotter. “It was not…!”

“He—I mean, she,” Pidge corrected himself, “she came into the lab to tell me that she didn’t want to be turned back into male!Lance any more…”

“Uh, no. You weren’t next, Pidge,” Lance said, staring down at her knees. “That was actually Keith…”

“Keith?”

Keith blushed and turned away from Allura’s scrutiny, pretending to ignore the rest of the infirmary’s occupants.

“Keith, who has claimed he was gay from the moment of his birth?”

“Yeah, well, Princess, believe me, Keith now knows all the ins and outs of the female body.” Lance waggled her eyebrows at Keith, and giggled as their fearless Captain turned flight-suit red and ducked his head. “We spent all the next day at it.”

Allura sighed. “Well, whatever. So, first Sven, then Keith. Then?”

Again with the uncomfortable shifting. “Then, the day after Keith, I went down to tell Pidge to not bother fixing his trans-whatcha-jigger…”

Pidge grinned. No, it was more like a leer.

Allura raised her eyebrow. “And?”

It was Lance’s turn to roll her eyes. “And what? He’s eighteen. Having been an eighteen-year-old boy, I have to ask—what eighteen-year-old is going turn it down when it’s offered?” Her face softened in memory again. “And you just gotta love that fabulously short refractory time…”

“Three times, then another two,” Pidge piped up proudly.

“So, after Pidge, you cornered Hunk?”

Lance smiled. “Yeah. Found him in the kitchens. Had a heck of a time cleaning up the mess before Nanny found us…”

Hunk coughed, turning nearly as red as Keith.

“And of course, after that, we did go back up to his room…”

Allura stared at Hunk, both eyebrows raised nearly to her hairline. “Do tell.”

“Of course, he did fight a little harder than Keith did…”

“Oh, really?”

“But the effort was really worth it in the end.” Lance leaned forward, long hair falling over one shoulder. “Do you know,” she whispered conspiratorially, “there’s an old adage about how the size of a man’s hands shows you how… um… well-endowed he is? You should really know that it’s absolutely true.”

The appraising look that Allura gave Hunk did not go unnoticed, and several folk got huffy over it. Keith practically snarled and draped himself around Hunk protectively. Hunk tried to hide his face.

Lance just giggled.

When the furor died down, Allura turned back to Lance. “Well, I guess we’ll have to get DNA samples from each of the boys, so that we can do the appropriate paternity tests when the baby’s born…”

That made Lance stop giggling right quick. “But… but… but…”

“But what?”

“But Pidge said that he’s got the trans-whatchamacallet all ready to go. I can be me again!”

Allura’s laughter pealed out merrily, with just a tinge of satisfaction. “But if you change back now, what happens to baby?” As Lance simply gaped at her in disbelief, she waggled a finger. “No way, missy. You already told Pidge you didn’t want to be you again, you wanted to stay as a girl. So a girl you shall be.” With an evil air that rivaled Haggar’s own, she patted Lance on the top of her head. “Get ready for even more hormonal fun, mood swings and crying jags, and the baby bump that eventually turns into a mountain and feels like you’ve got a two ton weight tied to your belt… and let’s not forget 36 hours of labor and 3 AM feedings, and colic…”

Lance was weeping loudly into his hands by the time Allura finally left off listing the events she could look forward to. By that time, however, the rest of the Voltron Force had slunk out of the infirmary and escaped.

Once they had reached the rec room, Keith grabbed Pidge by the shoulder. “All right, I’ve got to know—how much did Allura pay you to build that transmogrification beam?”

Pidge just grinned. “The amount was part of the non-disclosure agreement.”

Sven leaned back on one of the sofas. “I juust vonder how Lance is going to react vhen Allura tells him—er, her—that it’s all a joke.”

Keith thought about that… and shuddered. “Let’s make sure that we’re on Pollux when that happens. Or, even better, Doom.”

There was a muttered chorus of agreement to that, then Keith plunked himself in Hunk’s lap so they could watch Dangerous Visions.