“Yo, kid, y’alright?” a young girl—or at least, young-looking, but malnourishment could deceive anyone—called out. The boy, aged 12, looked up when he was addressed, and furrowed his eyebrows. It was odd to see anyone he didn’t recognize out in these parts, especially not a child like him—the most they ever got were drunk police officers riding around and yelling at everyone.

            “Who are you?” he asked, standing up straight to face the newcomer. The girl gave him a little smirk, crossing her arms and looking down at what he had been doing.

            “That’s no way t’ plant rice,” the girl commented, ignoring the question directed to her. “Ya not using ‘nuff force. Hole’s not deep ‘nuff.”

            “And what would you know about rice?” the boy huffed looking away from the girl and back at his work.”

            “More than you, ‘parently,” the girl retorted, kneeling by him without asking. “Ya need t’ make the hole deeper, so da rice has room to grow. Look ‘ere, see, about this deep.” She deepened one of the patches in the ground before taking a seed from the boy, placing it in, and recovering the hole. “Ya put ‘em too close t’each other; rice needs more space, see?” She began filling up the holes Lay had already dug and made new ones, each farther apart from the next. It seemed as though she had done this many, many times before, by the way her hands were moving so quickly.

            “You… what’s your name?” the boy asked, a bit warily. The other just grinned back up at him.

            “Shouldn’t ya say your own, first?” she replied cheekily, and his cheeks flushed at the reply, though he nodded in agreement.

            “Yeah, uhm, well, I’m…”

{…}

            “Ah, !”An Qi cursed out as she accidentally leaned her hand back into one of the digging rakes. Though she managed to pull back quickly due to her rapid reflexes, the sharp tool had still managed to dig a hole into the palm of her hand, shallow enough not to go all the way through, but deep enough to bleed out, and most definitely hurt her.

            He and An Qi had been getting along quite well as of late, as the girl always came over to help with the farming, or just to hang out and talk. He found out that she was actually a year old than them—now 15, while he was 14—and that she had recently moved out to the countryside with her father and little sister. That was about it for what he knew of her personal life, but to him, those things didn’t matter as long as she was good company.

            “Oh man, here, wait up for a second,” he said, running back in and out as quickly as he could to get his grandparents’ emergency medical supplies. By the time he had come back, medical kit in one hand and bucket of water in the other, to where An Qi was in the rice patch, the girl’s palm was almost entirely covered in blood. “Here, this’ll help.”

            Except it didn’t. He had tried rinsing the wound countless times, applying herbs and whatnot to it to try and close and clean it, but nothing was working. The blood kept coming, and the blood clot hadn’t even begun to form. He panicked as he heard An Qi’s breath become louder and her skin become paler. In that split second, he looked up, making sure to catch her eye, and, with a deep breath spoke.

            “Can you keep a secret?” he asked, and the girl just glared at him.

            “If it’s gon’ help me, then yeah, if not, I’ll beat ya face in, ya .” she cursed out, though he paid the harshness of the words no mind; she always spoke like this in difficult situations.

            Without another word, he took another deep breath and closed his eyes, holding the back of An Qi’s hand with one of his own, and lifting his other to rest on her palm. Despite hearing the confused words and noises coming from his friend, he continued, focusing all his energy into the hand he had on her palm, until even he could see the light flashing from behind his shut eyelids. After a moment, he gently opened his eyes and looked down to see the wound on An Qi’s hand now almost invisible, save for a small, circular scar. He flashed a grin up at his friend, resisting the urge to laugh at her astonished expression.

            “What the… how d’ya……” she mumbled out, unable to come up with a full sentence, “That was amazin’! How d’ya do that?”

            “I’m not exactly sure,” he said truthfully. He really didn’t, it was just something he… did. “Don’t tell my grandparents about this though; they always tell me not to do it.”

            “ man! Ya secret’s safe with me!”

----------

            It had been a while since Lay had worked with such a stressful case.

            While it was commonplace for An Qi, Dong Huan, and the rest of his comrades to come back from a riot or protest or whatever with a couple of injuries and whatnot, rarely did they ever get serious injuries. Even in the cases in which they did face some major harm, those were almost always mostly superficial, rarely dealing with the internals. But of course, everything had to be different when in’ magic was involved.

            With a sigh, he reviewed Tao’s situation in his mind one more time, as he focused his energy in his hands.

            Those attacks that Tao had faced were far from the blunt edge of hammer or the piercing speed of the bullet. None of his organs were so much harmed as they were stressed. Sure, there was some external harm, but those were simply the bruises on his back and the bumps on his skull from his impact with the wall. The true force of the attack was inside of him. Magical offenses had forced his internals to move around excessively in his body, to be his body’s shock absorber, and as a result, his body was weakening rapidly. Luckily, the organs were mostly unharmed, but his spine was another story. Bones were moving and attempting to dislocate, cartilage was coming loose, curves that shouldn’t be present were forming—it was a miracle that Tao hadn’t died yet, and he just knew, without even meeting those doctors of theirs, that those so-called ‘professionals’ would’ve given up immediately, said saving Tao would be impossible.

            But impossible was Lay’s speciality.

----------

            To say Suho was conflicted would be an understatement.

            Here he was, sitting solemnly with his head hung down low, as he was worried sick over Tao, not sure if the young guard would come alive or not. Yet at the same time, he couldn’t find it in himself to stop thinking of Lay.

            That damn rebel leader, that one outlier who had to come and flip everything they knew upside down. Who was he? What was he? Certainly not normal, judging by everything that’s happened thus far. It was obvious that he had more purpose to himself than just being a simple protester in a crowded city on Earth. Lay had some sort of greater purpose, for Earth, and for the rest of the galaxy, but Suho just didn’t know what that was. And it was that drove him insane.

            Lay’