There was an endless list of urgent things to do.

Naturally, the boys decided to take a vacation.

To be fair there was more waiting for them in Busan than the beach. The same signature radio signals as from the time loop device had been detected at the coast. Diving bots would try to locate the exact source. But until then, Nuest could pretend to have a lovely day in the sand by having a lovely day in the sand.

Another aspect was the lack of an intermediate headquarter, since the old one was getting dismantled and the new one wasn’t ready yet.

Baekho had spent a lot of the trip sleeping. He was able to impress he others with his ability to sleep even through their jamming sessions. The armored limousine with darkened windows driving them to Busan offered a multimedia experience that only a million dollar car could have.

It struck Baekho as strange how little he cared for all the material goods he had gotten access to. Back in his old life he was surrounded by people who had to work tirelessly just to get by and sometimes not even that.

His current situation wasn’t so much an addition of material goods to his life as it was a lack of the constantly nagging fear of bankruptcy. It made him hate the directors even more. How was it possible for anyone to feel greed after having more money than one could spend?

The boys of Nuest, and a few secret agents guarding them, checked into a hotel under false names and headed straight for the beach.

It was a bit windy but otherwise perfect. Baekho made sure everybody took a swim in the ocean. Ren refused, but what were Baekho’s muscles good for if not for carrying cute, little Ren to his wet doom? Despite the struggle Ren put up, Baekho successfully got the boy in the water. No one else refused after that. A pity. Baekho would have liked to throw some more boys around.

He got sidetracked when a swarm of fish passed him by. He swam down until he was out of sight of the surface and shifted.

One thing he had found out during training in the organization was that he could breathe underwater in Twi. Or rather that he didn’t have to breathe at all. Adding his power over Twi’s gravity to this, Baekho could navigate perfectly underwater. He only had to make sure to stay deep enough not to let any civilians back at the beach see him using his ability when he left Twi.

He popped out in the middle of the swarm, scattering the fish in all directions. He went up for air and searched for the swarm again. Scaring fish was a fun enough pastime.

Junior and Ren were trying to drown each other by the looks of it. Minhyun and Aron collected shells for the children whose parents wouldn’t let them go into the deeper parts. Even the men secretly watching over them had found things to do.

Baekho went back to swimming.

***

It was almost an hour later when his appetite grew larger than his desire to stay in the water. The mix of actual swimming in reality and underwater-flying in Twi had kept him from tiring out.

When he made his way back onto land he noticed that something was wrong right away. All the people were gone. The beach was deserted. Then his mind got a telepathic poke.

“Baekho?” Minhyun asked through a link.

“Yes? Where is everyone?”

“Are you back at the beach? I was just about to call out to you.”

“Yeah, I’m right here. But no one else is.”

Minhyun directed him to the now abandoned stalls where Baekho had hoped to find a food vendor. But everything was closed. Luckily he had packed a bag full of snacks. He knew his body’s needs.

The other four boys were staring at a screen held up by an operative.

“What’s going on?” Baekho asked with his mouth full of chips.

Junior looked up. “Earthquake in the next five minutes. Over ninety percent chance. Maybe followed by a tsunami, though much less probable.”

“Woah.”

Baekho dried himself off and slipped back into regular beach clothes before joining the boys again. They moved back to their car, the only one that hadn’t followed the evacuation order yet.

“What are we looking at?” he asked as he realized that everyone was still staring at the same screen.

Minhyun gestured. “There’s something at the bottom of the ocean. We’re looking at the feed from a diving probe. It’s possible the Shadow has built a structure there. When Junior predicted the earthquake we figured that it’s a good idea to take a closer look. Just in case the structure gets damage we could learn from.”

“That earthquake,” Junior said, “is about to hit us, by the way.”

“Sir,” an operative with a clunky remote control unit said. “We should move the bot closer. I think there’s an even larger part of the structure ahead. If you look close, there seems to be something metallic.”

“Right,” Junior said, “move in.”

The view changed as the bot swam past the concrete poking from the ocean floor. The metal turned out to be some kind of sensor that blinked as the probe came closer. Dust shot up into the water as explosives went off.

The wave of the subaquatic explosions reached the bot and the feed cut out. Seconds later the earth began to tremble.

“We caused this,” Junior said, eyes wide. “We activated a self-destruct mechanism.”

“Man,” Ren said, “the Shadow sure hates it if we find his toys. At least he won’t get back whatever was down there, right? And the quake was fairly minor.”

Junior’s face paled. “Oh no. No. This is bad. The future changed.”

“What are you seeing?” Aron asked.

“Busan is doomed.”

A/N: Beach episode: check.