“I am so sorry about all that,” Kris said, running his hands through his hair as he apologised for the twenty-third time (Jinsu had been unable not to count).  They were up in a sky garden on top of one of the towers of the military base, though it was a cloudy day and it was nearly impossible to see where the garden’s walls limits were, let alone the view.  “Security’s been frenetic for the past few days because of rogue guerilla attacks from outside the Federation, possibly because they got wind of the Attayear and thought it would help them in some way, and even though we managed to calm stuff down over Miss Park and her friends disappearing in the time machine when it wasn’t wanted, some of the generals are still a bit twitchy about the whole issue.”

A bit twitchy wasn’t the way Jinsu would personally have put it, given the soldiers had been happy to attack them almost the instant they landed.  Jino creating a smoke bomb out of the actual bomb that had been left on board had prevented them from shooting since they didn’t have clear aim, but even despite recognising the time machine and knowing it was the Attayear’s crew, they’d been disconcertingly quick to get on the offensive.  Jinsu was pretty sure she’d seen Jino shooting at least seven people (there had been no fatalities, thankfully) and at least another four had had arrows sprouting from various limbs, courtesy of Jongdae, before everything had descended into a brawling fist fight.  Thankfully the knives had been left out, but before she knew where she was, Jinsu had found herself crammed into a corner by Baekhyun and Jongdae, who had both taken on the responsibility of making sure nothing bad happened to her.

Kris’s arrival had brought everything screeching to a halt, but only once people had realised he was there with a whole lot of back-up troops.  Baekhyun had still had to take somebody down with an amazing flying kick even after Kris had called a halt and Jongdae had bruises from trying to protect Baekhyun after that.

After apologising a couple more times, Kris was distracted by what was going on over the radio waves.  After a moment or two of speaking in Chinese, he excused himself to go to a more private area of the garden, leaving a couple of heavily armed security guards in his place.

Minseok and Yixing conversed quietly with each other while Kris was occupied, but Jinsu stared off into space, worried about what was going to happen to them and whether Kyungsoo and the rest were going to be okay.  The teenagers who’d been with her on the Attayear were all over on the other side of the sky garden, with noticeably more guards around and with Jino to look after them alongside various of the technicians.  Everybody was under strict instructions to say nothing about the Attayear, no matter who asked, which was one of the reasons why Jino had remained with them.

Before too long, Kris returned, dismissing a holographic screen that was emanating from some kind of technological bracelet gadget on his wrist.

“There’s been another rogue time machine come in and we’re a bit stretched at the moment,” he told them, still sounding apologetic.  “I’m free to attend to you, however, and Tao will be up shortly.”  He looked from Minseok to Yixing and then to Jinsu.  “We were not expecting, ah, an increase in numbers.  There are concerns of you dragging people out of their timelines and people are worried about the potential that you’ve brought in a bunch of militants or an assassination squad.”

The level of paranoia that the leaders of the future habitually succumbed to was beginning to alarm Jinsu.

“We just picked up the original members of the Attayear crew,” she said.  “This is. . . Minseok. . . Yixing. . .”  She gestured vaguely at both of them.

“Oh, we know exactly who they are,” said Kris.  “But you told us some of them were dead.  We saw the bodies.”

Jinsu looked to Minseok for help.

“We don’t know what happened,” Minseok lied smoothly, “but we’re definitely not complaining.”

Kris eyed him suspiciously.  Jinsu decided it was best to change the subject before Kris could start probing.

“Where are the others who stayed here?” she asked.  “We’d kind of like to go home as soon as possible now the Attayear’s working and everybody’s together.”

That made Kris look even less happy.  “If the Attayear’s now working properly, there will be a lot of opposition to you up and leaving with an international treasure.”

“It doesn’t belong to you, though, or in this timeframe,” Yixing pointed out.

“And besides,” said Jinsu, “getting the others back from where they were scattered in history will already have caused some butterfly effects and things, so it’s not like you can detain us on grounds of affecting the past, since we’ve already done that.”

“Yes, and you gave rather a good speech on it last time you were here,” Kris acknowledged.

“What’s all this business about taking a time machine without ordinance?”  Yixing piped up suddenly.  “Are your leaders seriously trying to stir up trouble by accusing Park Jinsu of using her own machine to go where she wants?  That’s absolutely ridiculous.  And probably illegal.”

Kris grimaced and began to explain the political tensions that Jinsu had found herself wound up in the previous time.  His tone of voice indicated very clearly that he thought it was all a load of rubbish.

“One of the reasons we supported you  taking the machine was to stop them from trying to turn you into a political pawn, amongst other things,” he said eventually.  “We have managed to calm things down a considerable amount, but there are one or two other issues that need to be attended to as well.”

“Such as?” prompted Minseok.

Kris glanced at Jinsu before returning his attention to Minseok, ap