“Psst! Kalyn!”

I opened my eyes to darkness with a slit of light coming from the doorway. “Tao?”

“Get up and come.”

“What time is it?”

“It doesn’t matter.” He looked around, even though it was just us. “Look, if you learn the truth, it has to be at a place and time where no one will be able to hear us. I know it sounds ridiculous, but we can’t take any chances.”

I sighed and got up.

“Bring your jacket. We have to go outside.”

I took it and put it on as we walked out of the apartment.

We walked for a long time. The night had grown chilly, and the stars seemed to shiver with me.

Finally Tao stopped by a brick wall. He made a fist and pressed it on a pad. A light scanned it, then beeps sounded. “Access confirmed.”

A door, camouflaged into the wall, lifted. Tao removed his hand, a glint catching my eye. On his hand, he was wearing a ring with the shape of an hourglass.

He waved at me in the direction of the door, the look on his face slightly impatient.

When I entered, a large warehouse greeted me. One part was built as if it were a dining room, even with a chimney. In the center of the room, the ceiling contained windows, allowing the moonlight to come in. A hatch was located in the center of the windows. Several plants sat in the corner, some of them yellowing.

“So what’s the point of this place?” I asked, looking around.

“Over here.” Tao led me to a makeshift office space and sat down, gesturing that I should do the same. He opened up a laptop with the same hexagon with lines inside that was on Hua Shang’s shirt on its cover.

“Wait.” I laid a hand on the design. “What’s that?”

“It’s our logo.” Tao opened the laptop fully when I removed my hand. “It stands for our name. Do you see the English word EXO there?”

I studied it. “Eckso? How do you spell it?”

“E-X-O” he said in English. “For exoplanet.”

“Oh,” I said, seeing it in the hexagon. That was neat, hiding a word into a shape that didn’t take up too much space and could even tessellate.

“Here.” I shifted my attention to the laptop screen. Tao had opened a youku page. He clicked on the play button.

“When the sky and the ground was one…” a man’s voice began as a picture of a tree grew larger. As a circle with twelve symbols appeared, the story of a tree of life continued, describing how the presence evil forced the tree to cut in two, and the forces have to separate in two worlds. When the forces finally purify themselves, they will become one again.

Or something like that. The man’s English was confusing (or maybe my skills are just that incompetent) and the images distracted me from the subtitles.

Men entered in, singing with opera-like voices in hooded robes. They gathered underneath a spotlight in a room, looking up to the sky as they chanted. Suddenly those same guys knelt on the floor with the hands outstretched, but with different outfits.  The room had changed, where many lights lit up the place.

Chen’s face appeared as he started to sing. “The feeling of loss…” Someone stood on a skyscraper, raising his arms to the air. The scene quickly switched back to the group, and then a scorpion curled its tail in a perch on a tree. The camera focused on the man sitting on the log in the background, and then a man appeared with smoke wisps.

“Wait what???” I looked at Tao. “What’s Chen doing in there? And how did that guy get there?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him in a black room, petals falling. I turned to see him stand there in a red shirt, his left hand behind his back while the other hand held a sword as if he were about to twirl it. It quickly switched to Xiu Min and Lay in a dining room, one very similar to the one in the warehouse. Xiu Min was sitting down, Lay standing. Lu Han appeared in a room with many metallic spheres. Suddenly, Lay with everyone else started dancing. “What is going on?”

“Mama can’t you tell me why, people change in different ways,” Lu Han started singing. Suddenly the falling petals around Tao stopped as he looked up.

“This is our life,” Tao said quietly.

Chen summoned lightning from his hand to strike the ground, then walked towards the camera with storms in the background. Xiumin caught some water droplets in his hand from the ceiling. Lu Han moved the metallic balls with hand gestures as they started singing about how the world seems unfair and the cruelty of society.

Then Kris started rapping. My eyebrows raised involuntarily. It wasn’t like I didn’t know he was good-he demonstrated to me before. But professionally? Then I saw him raise his arm, an armlet flash in the light with a dragon design. He then leaped off the skyscraper backwards, then rocketed off into the air. He looked up, his gray eyes steely against his blonde bangs in a close up. Tao appeared again, swinging his sword and somersaulting.

They all started singing in an eerie bluish black background, morphing hairstyles each time. Suddenly the guy who had appeared out in smoke came out in the front, leading the group. Xiumin’s eyes flashed as he waved his hand in front of his ice badge, and the room started to crystallize.

When Xiumin appeared with his skullish facepaint, I jumped. You could say I was slightly warned by the time Kris appeared, but horrified thoughts circled around as I tried to keep down a nervous giggle. Lay then waved his hand, a slight blue aura appearing at his fingers as the flower unfurled. Tao balanced a petal on the tip of his sword, kicked another one, and then the petals started falling again. Suddenly there were images of two viewpoints, one upside down.

Finally it ended, my brain crammed with too many details than it was able to comprehend. I shook my head. “Seriously, I need someone to spell out what just happened.”

Tao sighed. “We, all six of us, make up half of the twelve forces. We have powers as a result.”

“Chen has lightning,” I started to recite from my memory. “Xiumin has ice, Lay has healing power, you have time control, Kris fire-“

“Flying,” Tao interrupted. “Well, the dragon has fire, but his power is flying.”

“And Lu Han can move objects without touching them,” I finished.

Tao nodded. “Telekinesis.” He shut the laptop.

I shook my head. “I don’t get it. I got the impression that knowing this would be dangerous, but it’s pretty apparent you have these powers from the video. It was on youku, too! Everyone can see it.” I got up from my chair and started to pace.

“Everyone can see it through the video, but not in real life.  Everyone thinks we are singers, celebrities, which we are.” He stood up too. “But singers have concepts-this is something that will stick to us for the rest of our lives. Everyone thinks what we did were tricks, animations, but we did them ourselves. We are different.”

“But if your powers can be recorded video, how am I different than everyone else?”

“Infrared cameras pick up movements, temperatures we cannot detect ourselves. Our company thinks we got some very skilled animators, editors to perfect and change the video, but instead we used that money to build special cameras that are able to detect our powers. Ordinary people need help to see what we can do. You don’t.”

“Why am I able to see?” I asked, exasperated. It seemed like Tao was trying to withhold answers, only addressing specific parts of my questions when I wanted all of the explanations out there.

Tao sighed. “We don’t know. All the forces can detect each other’s power, but we are the forces. Maybe you’re a force too…” his voice trailed off.

“So, to sum it all up, you guys are celebrities, and you are forces of the tree of life, whatever that may be. And while I know that now, I have to deny both facts.”

“Yes.”

I shook my head. “This is ridiculous! I must be dreaming, or going insane.” I turned around and started to walk away.

“Oh?” His voice changed, becoming slight arrogant. “Then how would you explain recent events? Like how you got here?”

I whirled around, fury building inside of me. “Are you telling me Kris flew me here?”

Tao crossed his arms with a nod.

“You are lying!” I pointed accusingly at him. “He knows I hate heights!”               

“Can you come up with any other plausible reason?” Tao asked with a slight smirk.

I glared. “You only have one point in your favor right now.”

“How did Lu Han take the shopping bags back to the dorm? Did you guys go through the elevator or did he go to the side of the building?” My mouth dropped. “You saw me freeze time and Lay heal with a glow,” he continued, ticking of his fingers.

I stood there, fuming. Why did I always have to be wrong? “So, wise guy, what am I supposed to do now?”

The competitive glint in his eye faded away. He shrugged. “Well, the others were going to decide, but they’re not here yet.”

“Now we are.” We turned to see Lay and Xiumin walk up. Lay nodded to Tao. “We’ll take over now.”

Lay then turned to me. “We are going to run several tests to see how much can you detect our powers and be affected, if at all. Perhaps the reason of your existence will be revealed in the process of doing so, although it seems unlikely.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You guys have a reason.”

“We are the forces of the tree of life,” Lay replied, echoing the words said in the beginning of the video I just watched. “We are the roots, the support for this world and all other worlds that support life. As you know, we are split up into two groups. Our part of the tree thrives here, in China. The other part thrives in Korea, where the rest of us reside. Now and then we meet there, as that’s where we first discovered our purpose, and every time is a chance for the tree to unite. But we cannot stay too long, otherwise the tree becomes vulnerable again if it doesn’t join.”

“Wait, so you’re doing this for a tree?” They nodded. “Wow.” Talk about extreme tree huggers. “Can I see it?”

“Not yet.” Kris walked up from the right. “Our job is to protect the tree. What if you’re one of the evil forces? We will have to do tests to see if you’re truly not affected. Then we will see what the tree has to say.” He shrugged. “Not one outsider has passed the tests so far.”

I swallowed loudly. “Okay, when do we do the tests?”

Something whizzed past my ear, making me blink. A metallic ball floated in front of me, and when I offered my hands, landed into my palms.

I looked up to see Lu Han standing in front of me. His mischievous eyes were now clear, solemn. “Now.”

*

Okay, so I didn’t write out the exact English introduction in the MAMA mv because let’s face it, it . It barely makes any sense. So I kinda summarized what it was about, how it should have been written as. Also, my Chinese is very mediocre, so the translations might not be accurate or they were only part of the lyrics translated, so some of the actual meaning might be lost. I just wanted this to be mostly MY work, not someone else's nicely translated lyrics. For some reason I feel like that's plagarizing >.<

Well it probably is :P

Why do my chapters automatically come up as mature? I really want to know that keyword that makes it automatically mature, because just saying, I bet a 9 year old could read this without thinking it's out of place. -sigh- IDK guys. 

Tao's cartwheel is BOSS btw. I would break my neck trying to do that. -.- My marching band friends all want me to become drum major and do a backwards flip off the platform. Um yeah, no. Although I like the idea of screaming and waving my arms like those anime clips, my fear of heights has a higher priority.

As you can tell guys, I love to digress XD