Chapter Twenty-Eight

The Forbidden Land, an isolated island located on the north of the mainland. It was rumored that any trespasser, who dared disturb the peace of the nature, would be bestowed upon punishment from the island’s beholder. It was unknown whether the rumors were true, but none were seen ever again after they laid their feet on this creepy island.

Taeyeon customarily avoided those endangered area where the Guardian Forces stood as she slowly made her way to their hideout.

Guardian Forces, they were creatures summoned by the Princess to guard this piece of abandoned island from any outsiders when they were not around. Guardian Forces were historical creatures whose capability was unknown. Taeyeon and her companions only learnt about their existences through reference books when they were forced to study them by the elderly back in their hometown. Neither of them had seen one before and naturally, they all believed it was only a myth until the day came, when one of the Guardians was ordered by the Princess to take them to this cursed island, only then they realized, the myth was not really a myth, but a solid truth.

Taeyeon finally came to stop when she reached the bottom of a huge cliff with green vines crawling all over it.

“Release.” She instructed while placing her palm just inches away from the green plants, and they gave way accordingly.

Taeyeon tucked her hands into her pockets as she strolled into the hidden cave. This place had been their hideout for almost three years. Three years… without their families and friends, just the five of them being forced to take injustice acts on humans for the sake of saving their clan.

Jonghyun was resting on the couch when he saw Taeyeon entering. He waved at her, “Welcome back noona!” He pushed himself up from the couch with the support of his elbows and walked to the petite girl. “I thought you said you won’t be coming back?”

“I decided to follow up the reports. Where are the others?”

“That Kim sneaked into the tomb again, so Narsha noona and Nickhun hyung went to check on the S-5s and S-6. Sunny noona is in the lab, she said the results are out.”

“And what are you doing here?”

“Guarding?” Jonghyun shrugged.

“From?”

“The Princess.”

Taeyeon let out a snort and rolled her eyes at him. “She wouldn’t launch an attack on us for no apparent reason. We’re doing a job for her and Aurales is her ultimate target. Unless she wants all the efforts to go into drains, she will never bother us.” Taeyeon pulled the guy by his arm and dragged him to the room behind. “Come on, we will look at the reports together.”

Their laboratory, not exactly the kind of laboratory where it was filled with tubes and chemicals, it only had one large table with a computer keyboard on it. Invisible screens were projected on the mid-air above it with the use of magical power.

When Taeyeon and Jonghyun entered the laboratory, Sunny was sitting behind the table observing the thirteen indigo and violet colored orbs glowing in white between her and the screens. She was too engrossed with the result projecting before her that she did not even realized the presences of her two fellow sorcerers.

“Noona!”

Jonghyun’s voice snapped Sunny out of her thought, causing her to avert her gaze to him. But instead of Jonghyun, her attention was shifted to the petite figure standing beside him.

“Taeyeon!” She got up from her seat and rushed to her petite friend. She held her by her shoulders, “You killed her?” Sunny asked with obvious anxiety in her voice, she remembered Taeyeon said she would only return once she finished off Tiffany Hwang’s life.

“Not yet, we are having an interesting game now.”

“Game?” Sunny was obviously baffled at her words. “What game?”

“Hide-and-seek.” Taeyeon said with a ruminating smirk on her face.

Hide-and-seek, a game which requires its players to hide in their desire locations and the appointed seeker will have to search for them. The game only ends after all the players have been discovered.

And in their case, both Taeyeon and Tiffany are the seekers as well as the players.

Seeing how successful her plan was in gaining Tiffany’s trust, Taeyeon knew for sure the hunter was aware of her. It surprised Taeyeon however, that Tiffany was actually willing to maintain an intimate relationship with her.

She could always be her friend if it was only for finding out the information about the mutants from her… So, why did she choose this path?

Taeyeon’s instinct was telling her not to let her guards down on this hunter. She and she might be the same person, but they weren’t completely the same. She could not deal with this hunter like how she dealt with her in the past.

“So when are you going to take her life?” Sunny was clearly discontent with Taeyeon and her problem.

“Not anytime soon. It is too early to kill her now.”

She would only kill Tiffany after she managed to get Tiffany to fall in love with her, wholeheartedly. The success rate might seem low, but Taeyeon was confident in capturing Tiffany’s heart…

Just like how she captured hers in the past.

Sunny crossed her arms, “We can’t have you spending so much time on her and neglect our actual mission, you know.” Discontent was obvious in her tone.

“Well, I’m back to see the result, aren’t I?” Taeyeon shrugged in an unconcerned manner. She casually asked, “How was the operation?”

Sunny shot her a glare, “Perfect.” She replied as she uncrossed her arms and walked back to the desk. “The Aurales sent all their elites,” Sunny looked at the thirteen glowing orbs in front of her, “There are fifteen of them, including Tiffany.”

Taeyeon observed the thirteen orbs before them, “But there are only thirteen of them here?”

“We decided to leave Tiffany ALONE since we don’t need her analysis. Her partner was left out in a way.” Sunny glared into Taeyeon’s eyes, she should know what she meant by saying that.

Taeyeon ignored her friend’s glare and inhaled deeply, “Is Tiffany’s partner Kwon Yuri?”

“I think so? What about it?” Sunny eyed Taeyeon curiously. “You have an issue with her?”

Taeyeon replied indifferently, “I’m just curious what kind of a person she is.”

“Yeah right… I bet it got to do with her.” Sunny mumbled to herself as she shook her head in despair.

“What did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything.” Sunny pretended to be ignorance. As her friend for so long, she knew exactly what agitated Taeyeon. She turned away from Taeyeon and flicked her finger. At the sound of the click, an indigo orb glowing in black appeared floating above Sunny’s hand.

“This is S-6’s orb, the only indigo orb we got from the S series.” She said to Taeyeon. “But look at the hunters’ orbs, only a few of them are in indigo while the rest are in violet, which means to say their average energy level is much higher than all the mutants we got so far.” Sunny drew a semi-circle with her palm around the indigo orb and it disappeared into thin air. “If we used the current Tranz on them, we may face the same problem as the S-5s and S-6 from before.”

* Tranz is a pill-sized crystal which extracts energy and controls mutation of a human when inserted into body. Color ranges from red to violet and each color represents its energy level intake.
 

Red is the weakest, whereas Violet is the strongest. Classifying them into numbers, Red stands for 1, whereas Violet stands for 7. In Sunny's dialogue, you see that she mentioned the mutants' code S-5 and S-6, S stands for the type of human and the number represents their energy level.

Please state in the comment if you don't get what I'm saying :3

Taeyeon understood what she meant. For the past three years, the five of them encountered problems in getting the S series mutants’ energies as some of their energies – specifically, the S-5s and S-6 – had exceeded the limits of the Tranz given by the Princess. While the crystals worked perfectly fine on the normal beings, these mutants went berserk and attacked humans, killing many of them and thus losing lots of energies.

When the Princess was told about this, she gave them the guide to enhance the Tranz. The whole procedure was actually very simple, but achieving them was another story. The success rate in enhancing the Tranz was so low that it actually took them almost three years to achieve a decent amount of indigo Tranz for replacing the ones in the berserk mutants. However, perhaps it was due to the side-effect of the previous Tranz, even up till now, some of the mutants were still not under their control, which was why they were locking all the S-5s and S-6 in the tomb.

Sunny guessed they had to enhance the Tranz again till they reached the violet level. The Princess certainly wouldn’t like to see energies meant for the survival ofEverlast gone just like that, besides, all their families and friends were there too. They had to do this no matter how much they hated it.

“By the way, I discovered one of the S-3 was killed by magic. Are you the one who did it?” Sunny asked.

Taeyeon plopped on the couch at the other end of the room and answered nonchalantly, “I am the one.”

“Taeyeon!” Sunny screamed at her. “You know how important these mutants are to the Princess, especially the S series mutants! Their energy forces are higher than the N series, the Princess is very concerned about it and you just killed it for nothing?”

“It wasn’t for nothing.” Taeyeon shrugged, “It entered my territory…” Someone got to pay for injuring her girl.

“That’s not the reason for killing it!” Sunny swore she could breathe out fire from now if she had the ability to! “We’ve lost three other S-4 mutants to Tiffany and her partner, and now, another S-3! Because of your reckless actions! Thank god their energies had been transferred to the energy repository already, or else I have no idea what the Princess will do to you or do to US!”

Taeyeon dug her ear purposely, showing her unconcerned to Sunny’s lecture. “What’s with those S-4s anyway?” Taeyeon wasn’t part of this operation due to some personal reason, but she was aware of her fellow mates’ objectives in synchronizing the hunters’ energy with the orbs they prepared and at the same time, achieve their energy status so that they could re-enhance the Tranz into suitable level intake for controlling them, and for the success of transferring the energies into the energy repository in Everlast.

“I suspect those mutants still have their consciousness. They must have known we are leaving Tiffany’s team out so they approached her, intending to end their life in her hands. I heard that they even managed to hurt a normal being too. I guess their intention is to rather kill all the humans than to let them transform into a mutant.”

“But it failed, right?”

“Yeah, the Kwon Yuri you mentioned saved her.”

“Save…” Taeyeon sneered at Sunny’s comment. “The hunters think they are doing all the good deeds, little did they know death is the only way to save the human beings. Or else all of them will have to become a slave, eternally.”

Sunny slapped Taeyeon on her arms, “Shh! The Princess might hear you!”

Taeyeon returned Sunny a I-don’t-give-a-damn glare.

She doesn’t care if the Princess can hear them, not like she can do anything to them too when she is the one who needs their help for mutating the whole human race.

“Noonas…” The girls diverted their attention to the neglected Jonghyun. “Are we still going to look at the reports?” Women are always women, no matter how many years had passed, they always neglected the men and important business for the sake of engaging in their very own girls’ talk.

“Yeah, let’s take a look at them. I’m still left with a couple to go.” Sunny went ahead, but stopped when she noticed Taeyeon was still slacking off on the couch. She walked back and pulled the reluctant girl up from the couch. “Come on, life is not only about Tiffany!”

Taeyeon immediately shot a furious glare at her. She jolly well knew how much she hated it when they talked about her.

Sunny held her hands up and retreated back. “I said Tiffany!”

“Honestly, Tiffany or not, she is still Stephani––”

Boom!

“Jonghyun!” Sunny turned towards the direction where Jonghyun originally stand. It was now filled with smoke. She chewed on her bottom lip and shifted her gaze to the petite girl who had just casted Explosive Fire on Jonghyun. “TAEYEON, STOP IT! WE ARE FRIENDS NOT FOES!”

Taeyeon put her hand down and looked at Sunny with the corner of her eyes. “He is still alive.”

As if to prove she was not lying, Jonghyun’s coughing was heard the very next second from behind the smoke.

“YAH! What the heck is going on in here?” A female voice was heard from the entrance.

A gust of wind came out of nowhere and blew the smoke away. Jonghyun came into everyone’s vision again. An invisible magical barrier laid in front of him, his body remained intact from the flames Taeyeon casted.

“Noona,” He coughed once more, “You almost killed me!”

Taeyeon narrowed her eyes at him. “I warned you before, never, ever, mention her name.” She shifted her gaze to the couple at the entrance, the corner of curved slightly upwards as she greeted them, “Hi Narsha unnie, and Nickhun.”

Nickhun returned her a smile and nodded slightly.

“I see it is you. That kid over there must have talked about her and trigger your anger again.” Narsha giggled to herself. Despite so many years had passed, Jonghyun never learnt his lesson and always mentioned that Stephanie’s name, earning himself a punishment from Taeyeon.

“Yah, noona, that’s not even funny! Sunny noona mentioned her name too! Why doesn’t she get the fire too?”

Sunny stomped up to him and threw a punch on his head. “I said I said Tiffany! Did you not catch my words back there?”

“What’s the different? They ar––Mmm!”

“Shut up! I don’t want to be caught in the fire with you!” Sunny stole a glance at Taeyeon, who was now glaring at them as though they were her enemies. “Yah, Taeyeon! Stop looking at us like that! We will stop, okay?”

Taeyeon snorted, retrieving her gaze and walked to the large table, where the thirteen glowing orbs stood. She hit the ‘Enter’ key and thirteen screens popped out in the mid-air. Each attached with the hunters’ individual photos and the analysis of their energy status on the side.

“Choi Sooyoung… Im Yoona…”

Taeyeon squinted when she saw the familiar doe-eyed girl’s photo on the screen.

So she is one of the elites too… Taeyeon thought to herself before continuing with the rest behind.

“Han Seungyeon… Nicole Jung… Kang Jiyoung… Victoria Song… Amber Liu… Lee Seungri… Dong Taeyang… Ok Taecyeon… Hwang Chansung… Lee Junho… Jang––” Taeyeon flinched when her eyes finally met the last guy on the row. The tremendous pain buried deeply in her heart for years once again emerged.

Jang Wooyoung… The cause of Stephanie’s betrayal!

“Taeyeon, what’s wrong?” Sunny noticed the extreme change in Taeyeon from her expression. She could see her friend was gritting hard on her teeth even with the mouth close. And her hands… they were clutching so hard that her knuckles were turning white already.

All four of them hurriedly approached their friend. They followed Taeyeon’s gaze to the last screen on the air.

“Omo…” Narsha’s hand naturally went up to to cover the astonishment which escaped when she saw the supposedly dead guy on the screen.

She couldn’t believe he was back, too.

Nickhun frowned. No wonder he found him awfully familiar when he was doing the scanning from far.

Whereas Jonghyun gulped and exclaimed out loud, “Even the name is the same! Is he still alive?” He quickly shut his mouth when he noticed the glare from Sunny.

“Taeyeon, relax, that’s not him. This is only a coincidence. You know he can’t be aliv–”

“He is back and is in Aurales with her!” Taeyeon pushed Sunny away roughly and headed for the exit.

“Come back here Taeyeon!” Sunny quickly grabbed onto her. “You are NOT going to kill him!”

Narsha and Jonghyun saw what happened and quickly did same thing as well.

“Let go of me!”

“NOONA!”

“YAH! TAEYEON! HOW CAN HE BE THAT SAME GUY WHEN HE IS A HUNTER?! THAT GUY IS A BEAST OKAY?” Narsha screamed into Taeyeon’s ear.

But Taeyeon ignored every single word from her fellow sorcerers. “Release me now. I will not hesitate to attack any one of you!”

“YAH!”

“DAMN IT TAEYEON, CAN YOU JUST CALM DOWN FOR A SECOND?”

“HYUNG! WHERE ARE YOU?” Jonghyun scanned his surrounding, the corner of his eyes caught the tall figure with his arms folded, leaning against the wall next to the entrance, looking at them leisurely. “STOP STANDING THERE, HELP US OUT WILL YOU?”

……………

“The three of you, just do as she say, let her go now.”

“NO WAY!” The trio replied in unison.

Nickhun shrugged. “Well, good luck then.”

“NICKHUN! I THOUGHT YOU ARE ONLY A WOMANIZER, I DIDN’T KNOW YOU ARE SUCH A COLD-BLOODED A**HOLE TOO!”

“HYUNG! HOW CAN YOU LEAVE HER TO KILL SOMEONE INNOCENT!?!”

“YAH! TAEYEON, DON’T––CRAPS! GET AWAY!”

The moment Sunny finished her sentence they felt a strong gust of wind blowing under their feet. The speed of the wind was so strong that it felt like there were thousands of blades slicing through their fleshes. The three of them quickly loosened their grips on Taeyeon and jumped back. As soon as they made their moves, a whirlwind came out from the bottom of the ground and surrounded Taeyeon in its middle. Sunny, Narsha and Jonghyun quickly moved further away from where they were standing when the sharpness of the extremely strong wind caused pain to their skin.

“STOP IT TAEYEON!” Sunny quickly casted a magical barrier and protected herself from the strong whirlwind. “Are you trying to kill us too?!”

The whirlwind stopped, a smirk crept onto Taeyeon’s face when she was back into everyone’s vision again. “You asked for it.” She averted her attention to the exit and quickly made a dash for it before the three sorcerers were able to react.

“TAEYEON!”

Bong!

An invisible barrier came into light when Taeyeon reached the exit. Her body clashed straight into it and the momentum threw her right off to the other side of the room.

The three sorcerers watched in awe. At first they thought Taeyeon was going to run away and the next second they saw her flying to the wall and now, she was unconscious.

“What happened?” Sunny turned to the most suspicious guy who was still leaning against the wall.

“Ah…” Nickhun pushed himself away from the wall and scratched his head. “I set up a barrier.”

“YOU WHAT?!” Narsha screamed out loud and stomped to the guy, dabbing his chest with her index finger. “AND YOU DON’T EVEN BOTHER TO TELL US, JUST STAND THERE AND WATCH US DIE?”

“You’re still alive aren’t you…” And as hyper-active as usual too.

“BUT SHE ALMOST KILLED US WITH HER WHIRLWIND!”

“I did ask you to release her…”

“Unnie!” Sunny quickly dragged Narsha back before she started a fight with Nickhun. “Let’s deal with Taeyeon first! She may go berserk again when she wakes up! We got to find a way to stop her!”

“Right.” Narsha took in a deep breath and exhaled all the frustrations bottled up in her chest. She placed left hand on her waist, the right hand pointing at Jonghyun, “Jonghyun, go find cuffs and chains now!”

Jonghyun nodded obediently and scurried out of the room immediately.

“What you wanna do unnie?” Sunny went forward with Narsha, standing by the side and watched Nickhun carried the unconscious girl in his arms.

Nickhun was waiting for Narsha’s instruction too.

“We are sorcerers, dealing her magically is a no, so I’m doing it physically.”

“Which is?”

“Lock her up with chains. And I’ll get Jonghyun to perform that on her.”

“That?” Sunny exclaimed. “Do you mean The Prayer of Wrath?”

The Prayer of Wrath, a magical skill which nullifies both the user and target(s)’s magical powers who are within the attack range. Both user and target(s) cannot perform any magical skill until the magic wear off – minimum of twenty four hours – or more if the user possesses higher ability to control its power.

Narsha nodded.

“Yah! Unnie! You’re sacrificing Jonghyun!”

“You can do the job too, I don’t mind. But don’t forget this Sunny, we only have five people. We can’t let our manpower stay low for a long time. You don’t know what the Princess will do.” Narsha wasn’t sacrificing Jonghyun just because he was the weakest, but the fact was they needed the stronger members to be on hold in case there was any sudden occurrence.

“I understand… Sorry unnie, I don’t mean to question you.”

“Hmm…” Narsha pinched and squeezed Sunny’s cheeks suddenly with both of her hands.

“OONIIIII!” Sunny’s eyes widened in surprise, she tried to move those creepy hands away but to no avail.

“THAT’S WHAT YOU GET FOR SUSPECTING ME, KID!”

“OOONNNIII!!!!”

An imaginary crow flew past Nickhun’s head. He felt cold sweat rolling down his cheeks. He might seem strong and Taeyeon might look small, but this girl was definitely not a joke! His arms were starting to strain from all these weight…

He looked at the two women who were still engaging in a child fight helplessly. He opened his mouth and asked in the most charismatic and pleasant voice he could produce, “Can you guys tell me where to leave her? Please??”

But he was unfortunately ignored.