"Do you remember the chess pieces, Kyungsoo?"

Kyungsoo rubs his temples as he runs, following Baekhyun's lead towards the cell that holds their Oracle. A pulsating pain singes his nerve centers. He shrugs the voices off.

"Do you remember the Great Pyramid, Kyungsoo?"

Jongin's eyes are pulsating red, his inner demon voices muffled by his human will. He notices Kyungsoo stumbling on his own two feet and offers him his hand as they continue running. The agents are chasing them down the hall.

"Do you remember the pirate ship, Kyungsoo? Are you going to save the little people again? Offer them light?"

This last voice freezes Kyungsoo into place, his eyes widening, his heart palpitating.

"Who...who are you? How do you know my memories?"

"Oh, child, I feel insulted. How quickly one forgets his mentors, his teachers, his masters!" the voice is wise and bitter, it sounds as old as time. He remembers it now. Their teacher. The one in the Observatory from when they were little. But then he stopped being their teacher one day. He went away. And he can barely even remember him and yet the voice resonating within him has a strange grip upon his innermost thoughts and fears. "Ah, my apprentice! I taught you so much and yet not all. But you are about to be given the most important lesson of all! I'll be upon you shortly, child" a twisted maniacal laugh follows, but not a madman's laugh but the evil chuckle of a being superior in reason, laughing at ignorance.

As they run across the hall, Jongdae zapping the ground beneath them, walls cracking and wires electrocuting the agents running and shooting behind them, Minseok freezing the tiles, causing them to slip, Chanyeol torch blowing the unlucky militia threading too close, they hear the most horrible deafening horn. A robotic voice beckons people to take cover. Windows start shattering from the insane pressure of the winds.

"Sehun, are you doing that?" Junmyeon yells.

"No, I'm not! I don't know what's happening!" the youngest one shouts, trying to regulate the winds with his own power but they will not listen to his call.

Above them, the sky grows dark. A loud ringing blasts their eardrums as they fall to the ground. Baekhyun manages to reach Taeyeon's cell as he covers his ears and cries in pain, leaping into the air with a dagger and cutting the ropes suspending her to the ceiling.

Spaceships swarm the sky turning it to soot and ash. Giant laser beams cut through the buildings beside them like a knife through soft butter, forming patterns.

"You were always fond of history and wars, weren't you, Kyungsoo? Of plots and schemes? The Trojan horse of this story is none other than you. You fooled them all. Now will you pass the final test?" the voice is maddening to say the least, Kyungsoo finally dropping to his knees in surrender. A few surviving agents trail behind but stop dead in their tracks at the site of the space ships.

"Taeyeon, wake up!" Baekhyun beckons his lover. "Baby, we need your help! I saved you! I did it like I always promised! I love you! Please..." Baekhyun's voice is put out by a gunshot, a bullet knicking his left calf. He falls over Taeyeon's body. Just as a laser beam lights the back of his head and another bullet flies towards his head, it slows down to slug's pace then freezes in mid air. A figure shoots out, grabbing both him and Taeyeon, landing with them on an adjacent roof.

"Yifan...what are you doing here, you...you..." Baekhyun tries mumbling.

"You can hate on me later. We kind of have to save the world now so I'm gonna need you to put off hating me for a bit and work with me, okay?" Yifan says urgently. Taeyeon opens her eyes finally to the horror swarming above them. A radio in the distance sends out its panicked caster's voices, crying "The skies have darkened in cities all across the world, inactive vulcanoes, dormant for thousands of years have erruped, Marseilles is flooded, Arizona is ablaze, Berlin has frozen, frostbitten citizens falling on the streets to their deaths, Edinburgh's structures have been swallowed by the ground, Paris has lost all power. There is mass despair and destruction, the world is ending, the apocalypse is upon us".

Craters form around Jongin as he leaps, carrying Kyungsoo with him. This is nothing like their practice sessions. Laser beams hit the ground so violenty, it's as if meteors are shooting out from a giant machine gun. Then it all stops. The ringing in their ears continues as a giant mothership descends and lands on the ground in front of them, where the military base used to be. Agent Nikolai and Mr. White attempt to sneak away as a giant door opens from the ship, the rustling of a long robe and the soft steps of an old man descending, the only sound within the hollow silence. The old man snaps his fingers as he turns his head towards them and Nikolai and White explode, disintegrating into nothing more than dust. There is no blood, no guts. Just cellular level disintegration. Poof. And they are no more, as if the old man just performed a magic act. "Just smoke and mirrors, children. Smoke and mirrors", he utters, his long white beard.

"It's the old man who turned us to children and betrayed our emperor! Luhan shouts, moving blocks of rubble with his mind, shooting them towards the man who just whisks them away, directing them in the manner of an annoyed and somewhat bored conductor.

"Now, now, Luhan, I can reverse your age again if you would like and this time make you un-born. Only there is no mother to carry you. Such pity..." the old man smirks. "You bore me. Get out of my way!" he conducts again, lifting Luhan with his mind and tossing him into the crumbling brick wall across.

Bodies lay across the ground as he walks past and atop them, heading straight for Kyungsoo.

"Do you remember me now, child?" he asks with the most evil of smirks, staring in Kyungsoo's direction, his eyes turning blue, the veins on his face glowing purple. His wrinkles are deep, his skin is crumbling and yet he moves swiftly as if he in his prime, springs under his feet. Yixing tends to Luhan's cracked bones, trying not to draw any attention to them.

"Our teacher?" Jongin asks, holding Kyungsoo's shaking body.

"Ahh, you surprise me, Jongin. You were always the slow one. Lord knows why Kyungsoo ever wanted to hang around such an idle mind...Pity. I could have used you had you been a tiny bit brighter. A teleporting puppet of your calliber could have proved useful", the old man ponders outloud, stopping in place. Pity you must die now.

Chanyeol forms a bow and arrow of flame, shooting it at the purple-veined old man. At the same time, Junmyeon, Jongdae and Minseok all attack, using the power of their elements, concentrating them all towards the old man. Just when they think they got him, he reappears closer to Kyungsoo.

"He can teleport too? How many powers does he have?" Sehun asks. The serum inside him starts acting up. Nikolai and White may have been demolecularized but their poison is still inside their veins and it's only going to make them wreckless, he realizes. Sehun summons a tornado, greater than any he had pulled off before. It does damage to the smaller ships as it rolls by, car alarms and more sirens ringing as it eats away at metal and stone.

"Oh, aren't you a feisty little one? So young, so bold! I remember your sassiness! What a disobedient pupil you were!" the old man conducts his own storm, immobilizing everyone in sight. There are screams, there is blood. Cloaked shadows appear and measure their elemental forces against the others.

Kyungsoo slowly rises from his dumbfoundedness, still trying to make sense of his teacher and the old man being one and the same person. His teacher never looked like this. Shouldn't have aged like this. His teacher did not possess all the elemental powers. His teacher had not been cruel. And why was it that he could hear his voice inside his head? Jongin was teleporting around him, acting as a shield, receiving bruises, his red eyes reddened once more, his hair turning white, his fingers contorted like eagle talons, ready to pounce and slice.

"Jongin, stop! I can defend myself. It's me he wants. Stop defending me. Stop. You're dying"

Jongin didn't answer. The sounds coming out of him were not human. Where had the painter Jongin gone? Kyungsoo thought. The one who tossed his laundry around the room, Mongyu at his feet? The one who painted the world and listened to him sing? His friend, his companion, his raison d'etre? The one who woke him up from night terrors, who soothed him when he had sleep apnea, who held him until he felt safe?

Jongin growled and leapt at the old man who, for the first time, seemed taken aback by his power. Jongin sliced through all the cloaked shadows huddling around him, unwavering and posessed. The old man had had enough. He stretched out his arm, a scythe of crackling lightning forming in his hand and stabbed Jongin's stomach, staring him right in the eyes, twisting the blade in his wound, purple demonic eyes meeting crimson ones, whose light he had just robbed. Kyungsoo screamed the most woeful, desperate, mornful sound Taeyeon had ever heard. The worst of her prophecies was coming true. Everything was ending.

"Jongin! No! No, no, no! You bastard! You sick, twisted, bastard!" he yelled at the one who had proclaimed his master. His scream created a vibration that shook the earth around them.

"That's it! That is what I want! Show me what you were always capable of! Show me everything I taught you! This is the fire and rage that needed to be awakened inside you, aprentice! Do you remember now? All my lessons? Not just history, geography, astronomy, myths...no...but the true knowledge of your ancestors, of Earth's ancestors, the fountain of power that only a few can control! Do you remember now?" the old man's voice grew louder, like a giant's war cry echoing over canyons.

"I remember nothing! And you will also remember nothing soon, I will end you for what you just did!"

"Haven't you ever wondered how the Eathlings were capable of such wonders before all their present day technology? Haven't you wondered how all their legends and myths came about? They were inspired by real events. Their Gods were like we are now. They had powers. They did unimaginable things. And where are they now? Extinct! Why? Because the humans were weak, they did not know how to grow, how to learn, how to master their powers! They were greedy, they let their powers dull, they stopped believing. Their world is dying, just as ours has. Only they do not have our powers and technology to maintain any life. Have you heard the story of the astronaut and the whale who wanted to live in space?"

It was as if that sentence triggered something in his subconscious. Kyungsoo now remembered everything.

"How did it go? Oh yes..." the old man started reciting:

Vincent the whale lived with his family at sea
With his mother, his father, and his pet sea star named Lee
And life underwater was as easy as it came
Everyone lived happily not a reason to complain
But Vincent was different; he didn’t seem to agree
This submarine lifestyle was too boring and plain
On top of it all while his friends would have fun
Vincent would dream of life under the sun
And this wandering mind would cause others to stare
‘Cause they thought he was crazy and too far out there

"You are Vincent the whale and Earth is your space. You do not belong here in this primitive, decaying planet whose only purpose now is to offer us resources. You stubbornly clung to this blue speck of dust since you were a child. But you are destined for greatness. You are better than Earthlings. Better than all your friends, even the Oracle. You are the only one who can become me. Who can carry out my legacy, sustain our planet that you and your stupid friends abhore. But it is a masterpiece. My masterpiece. It's a utopia and yet you choose to flee it, you choose to degrade yourself, failing your destiny amongst godless, faithless, greedy, treacherous worms. And Jongin here...well he was Augie, the astronaut supporting your falacy.

Kyungsoo's childhood had been stolen from him, his memories half erased half distorted by his master. He remembered now. He was experimented on. His bruises and cracked bones didn't all come from his parents. He was weak and apathetic for a reason. He had been a lab rat. Studying about Earth had been his solace. Jongin had been his saviour. Taeyeon and Baekhyun too. Jongin....Jongin who lay dead at the old man's feet. Dead. No. No. This was a bad dream.

"I'll show you what I've learned, master, Kyungsoo murmered with a twisted grin on his face.

"Kyungsoo, don't!"

Huang Zitao finally leapt from his hiding spot, following Yifan's plan, attempting to stop the hands of time, humanity's final hours rushing through like grains of sand through a broken hourglass.

Reference: https://anescapetoholdonto.com/children-stories/the-astronauts-whale/