Before they knew it, it was already Friday and Xiumin was already dragging them downtown.

“What is this place?” Chen asked, cringing at the amount of people.

“Welcome to the URBAN folks! Only the best underground club there is!” Xiumin exclaimed over the loud music.

Located at a well-hidden part of downtown Seoul, URBAN was one of the most popular Hip-Hop clubs in the city. The place was a worn-out warehouse on the outside, but completely different inside - very spacious, walls covered in graffiti and dimly lit with strobe lights. It was jam-packed with people dancing to the inhumanely loud trap music. They were seemingly oblivious to the heavy smoke that filled the air.

The teenagers squeezed themselves inside with Xiumin leading them beside the bar.

“Is this place even legal?” Hyerin questioned, coughing slightly. “Ugh, and it smells like weed in here. Why do you even go to this place, Xiumin?”

“What? It’s really fun! The bouncer doesn’t give a even if there are underage kids inside.”

“My worries exactly.”

“But hey, the atmosphere is awesome, right?” he said, bobbing his head to the music.

“Not really my type of crowd,” Hyerin said, judgingly eyeing a couple grinding against each other. “So you go here often?”

“Oh not only me, silly!” Xiumin chuckled. “The others do, too,” he said, pointing to the rest of the boys.

“Really?” Hyerin exclaimed in surprise, looking towards the others. “Are you saying you’ve all been here?”

Xiumin laughed out loud. “Aww, you’re so cute, Hyerinnie. Of course! Well, except for Chen and Luhan, I think. Chanyeol and I hang out here almost every week, sometimes Kris and D.O. tag along. Lay, Kai, and Sehun go here for dance battles. Every Thursday there are special genre performers, like Baekhyun for instance. I didn’t even know it was him until this M-LX crap happened! His band rocks the out of the crowd!” he laughed. “Oh, and Suho and Tao come frequently, too.”

Hyerin stared incredulously at Xiumin.

“Even you, Suho?” she asked the boy beside her.

Suho rubbed the back of his neck shyly. “Well, yeah. I come here sometimes when Kai convinces me to watch him in his dance battles,” he said, smiling at Hyerin.

“What in the world…?” She didn’t even know Suho and Kai knew each other outside of M-LX in the first place.

Before she could question this, the music stopped abruptly. Instead of the crowd having a violent negative reaction, they were screaming and cheering, fists pumping up in the air.

“What’s going on?” Hyerin asked.

Xiumin smirked. “You’ll see."

“Let me hear you scream!” the DJ situated at the tall platform yelled. The crowd obliged. “You all know what time it is!”

The music came back, but instead of trap music, the speakers blasted hard-hitting hip-hop. The people continued to cheer as they backed away to form a small circle in the middle of the dance floor.

As if on cue, a short, slightly muscular boy covered in tattoos stepped inside the circle. He was wearing a tank top, a pair of camouflage khakis and a snapback. He didn’t waste time and started dancing right then and there.

After a couple of moments, he ended his show with a chest pump, making the people scream louder. All the while, he had a smug look on his face.

“Yo, Kai!” Xiumin called. “Are we going to shut this down or what?”

In the meantime, the boy was already stripping off his sweater, revealing a black loose tank top. He was wearing his trademark smirk as he high-fived his friends.

“Let’s kick this guy’s !” Sehun yelled over the music.

Kai sauntered towards the circle, but not before stopping beside Hyerin. “Get ready to be swept off your feet.”

Hyerin glared at him and pushed him away. “Just go."

When Kai entered the circle, everyone was already going wild. He bobbed his head to the new song, loosely shaking his arms to warm up.

Once he was ready, he started to move swiftly to the rhythm. When he had gotten more familiar to the song’s beat, he began to perform bigger and stronger movements.

Seeing this for the first time, Hyerin had open the whole time she watched. She knew Kai was good, but not this good. Now she was starting to believe he really was capable of anything.

When Kai ended his dance with a half-split, Lay came on next, then Sehun. As the boys appeared one after another to perform, the screams got louder and louder.

“C’mon, don’t be a killjoy!” Tao exclaimed beside Hyerin.

Hyerin turned to look at Tao. He was pushing a protesting Luhan towards the dance floor. “Go on, Lu! You need to show them what you got, too!” the younger boy said.

“No way! Tao, stop it!” Luhan demanded, struggling under Tao’s grip.

“You should go,” Hyerin said.

Luhan looked at her incredulously. “What?”

“You should go,” she repeated, shrugging casually. “I’m pretty sure you can dance as good as them. This rarely happens so you should just go.”

Luhan didn’t have time to reply before Tao successfully pushed him inside the circle. Shouts of encouragement erupted.

“Woah, what the hell is Luhan doing in there!?” Chanyeol asked, looking as excited as the others.

“Is he going to dance? He dances!?” Sehun exclaimed.

“For a very long time now, actually,” Baekhyun said.

Luhan did not fail to impress as he gave his all to freestyle in front of the huge crowd. Everyone was going crazy. Kai and the other dancers were shocked to see the boy move to the beat so sharply and flawlessly.

Hyerin watched on with a small smile on her face. All it really took for him to step up was a little encouragement. She knew inside of Luhan was the urge to show what he got as well, and it made her glad that that was what he was doing right now.

She snapped out of her train of thought when she felt a hand creep up the small of her back.

“What the-” She looked up and was surprised to be met with a man twice her size, grinning wickedly down at her.

“Hey there, muffin,” he cooed. His hands traveled down to her , squeezing it slightly. “Damn, that’s some right there.”

Hyerin’s eyes widened, hands balling into fists. The ing nerve.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she hissed, grabbing his arm and prying it off her. “Get your ing hands off me.”

“Aw, don’t be trippin’. Whaddaya say we meet at the back in fifteen?”

“I say go off, dude. Leave me the hell alone.”

“Ooh, I see this babe has an attitude.” He stooped down to her level to meet her eyes.

Hyerin shoved him away as hard as she can. “Go away!”

The man’s expression turned grim as he looked to the side, tongue poking the insides of his cheek. “You shouldn't have done that if I were you.”

“Hey.” Tao suddenly appeared in front of Hyerin, defensively pushing her back behind him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The thug laughed out loud. “What? Is this your little boyfriend?”

Tao glared at him. “She said back off so back off, will ‘ya?”

“You don’t talk to me like that, you little punk,” he said, poking the middle of Tao’s chest. “Unless you’re looking for .”

“Psh. Please. Stop threatening me unless you do it for real. You’re all full of bull,” Tao scoffed, making the man pissed.

Extremely pissed.

“Yo, what’s your problem, little boy? Your thinking you can go against my crew?” He signaled to a couple of men from the other side of the room.

“Woah, woah, woah, woah there!” Xiumin quickly made his way next to Tao. “G-Wiz! Hey man, what’s up?” the boy said, forcing out a chuckle. “Look, sorry for the trouble, man. These guys are my friends and we’ll be leaving so-”

“Shut up,” he growled. Xiumin immediately stopped talking.

“We sure as hell can go against your crew.” Hyerin stepped up, eyeing the thugs who appeared beside G-Wiz. “You will get your asses beat up before you even know it,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Keep your words to yourself, will you!?” Xiumin hissed. “Look, dude, I’m really sorry for this-” Xiumin didn’t get the chance to continue when G-Wiz gave him a hard punch to the gut. Xiumin staggered back as Kai and Baekhyun supported his ground. At this rate, everyone’s attention was on the fight.

That was the last straw for Hyerin. “You son of a !” she yelled, punching the man in the face with all her strength.

As if on cue, G-Wiz’s sidekicks attacked Hyerin and the boys. Everyone in the club rushed to evacuate the place, not wanting to get involved in the fight.

“I’ll finish you off, you little !” G-Wiz grabbed her by the collar. He threw her to the other side of the room, where she slammed into the vandalized wall. He was making his way towards her when a hand clutched his shoulder.

When he turned around, Kris’ right fist collided with his jaw.

He fell to the floor with a grunt and Kris grabbed the front of his shirt as he kicked him repeatedly in the stomach. It didn’t take long for G-Wiz to recover and pulled on the blonde’s leg. Kris landed on the floor. The thug wrung his fingers around Kris' neck, pulling him up.

Lay came to Kris’ rescue, yanking the man away from him. With all his strength, he kicked G-Wiz on the chest, successfully making him fall to the floor.

Meanwhile, the rest of the boys dealt with the other gangsters. Baekhyun lunged, dodging an uppercut. When he got back up, he grabbed a fistful of the thug’s hair and jabbed his knee hard against his forehead. Beside him, Kyungsoo was having the night of his life, effortlessly kicking .

Across the room, Chanyeol pinned a man by his neck with his left arm while he used the other hand to land punches on his stomach. “You.” Punch. “Damn.” Punch. “Bastard!” Punch.

Kai chuckled as he caught a glimpse of Chanyeol. “Easy there, buddy,” he teased, swiftly catching his opponent’s leg just before it landed on his face. He threw him down to the ground.

Just when G-Wiz’s men were getting outnumbered, more of them arrived at the warehouse, which meant more fighting was going to happen.

Hyerin and the others, at this rate, were exhausted.

Luhan countered a punch from his opponent, but another thug attacked him from behind. Seeing this, Baekhyun ran towards the three and tackled the man off of Luhan.

Hyerin kneed another opponent in the stomach just ast he was about to pounce on Sehun. “This is getting out of control!” she cried out. “Do something!”

Suho karate chopped the gangster’s hand off of his shoulder before sweeping his leg under him, making the man fall on the ground. Suddenly, an idea struck him.

“Tao!” he screamed, whipping his head around to look for the boy. “Tao, use your power!”

“What!?” Tao exclaimed in return as he finished off another attack.

“Use your power! Use time control to stop this!” Suho said, receiving a strong punch in the face.

One of the thugs laughed. “Now they’re talking about superpowers. What a bunch of losers!” he cackled, strangling Chen in the process.

Kris, who was trying to get up from the ground, agreed with Suho. “Do it!” he exclaimed, wincing as he clutched his stomach. “Do it now!"

“I don’t know if I can stop it without you guys getting affected!” Tao yelled.

“It doesn’t matter! Just do it!” Baekhyun hissed, a startling amount of blood dripping from the corner of his mouth.

The others distracted the men away from Tao while he threw one last jab at his opponent before concentrating on his power. He closed his eyes, clenching his fists, as he tried to grasp the faintest of noises inside the room. 

Please work. Please work. Please work. He thought about the eleven boys and Hyerin, imagining the room in pause while the rest of them still up and moving.

Tao concentrated on his power so hard that the veins in his temples emerged. At this rate, he was shaking. For a moment, Hyerin thought he was going to cry when suddenly, everything went still.

The boy succeeded, seeing that everything was now frozen aside from the thirteen of them.

“Holy crap,” Hyerin mumbled in shock as she struggled to get up.

“We need to get out of here. Now,” Suho ordered, wrapping Xiumin’s arm around his shoulder. “We need to be out of here when Tao returns everything back to normal. They’re probably going to send more and we’ll be dead meat by then.”

“Where are we gonna go?” Sehun asked.

“I know where,” Suho said, heading towards the door. “Follow me!”