In the UNPC’s main space base, the break rooms and dorms of pilots thrummed with anticipation and fear. The coup d’etat was coming at any moment, but no one save the few involved knew when that moment was.

Meanwhile, EXO, along with several other novice teams, was inaugurated into the extensive black market systems underlying the UNPC’s chain of command. With such a concentration of pilots, it was bound to happen soon, but combined with the chaos of the moment and the uncertainty of their futures, Cheetos and Monster flowed freely between gloved hands and behind closed doors.

With the main base so crowded, it was hard finding spaces not monitored by cameras or officers, but the pilots found a way. In forgotten storerooms and down dark hallways money and contraband disappeared, to be pumped throughout the UNPC and back to Earth.

Xiumin was with Lay in an old storage room negotiating the trade of a six-pack of Fanta for some old manga he had brought from Earth when there was an announcement over the base’s intercom system, faint from behind several stacks of boxes. Dongwoon from Cube, the owner of the Fanta, put a finger to his lips at the first crackle of static, straining to hear the faint words.

Yunho to the atrium, please.

“Sorry guys,” Dongwoon said after the announcement had finished. “We’ll do this another time.”

He picked up his Fanta and was out the door in a second. The coup d’etat had begun.

…

When Lay left the storeroom with Xiumin, half-heartedly mourning the loss of their soda, the hallways outside were the same as before. Pilots and staff still walked about their regular business, talking with each other and glancing at hand-held tablets.

They decided to see what was going on at the atrium, but when they arrived there the artificial grass and trees were just as peaceful as before, the storefronts surrounding the park as cheerful as ever.

“The announcement must have been just some kind of signal,” Lay mused. “I wonder what’s actually going on.”

They could only wait; that day was one of their rare days off, and they had nothing scheduled. So when they spotted Sehun and Luhan sulkily sipping some bubble tea nearby, they sat down too.

“Did you hear the announcement?” Xiumin asked, waving down a waitress.

“I was wondering about that,” Luhan said slowly. “Yunho never did appear here.”

“We think it was some kind of trigger,” Lay said, pulling up a chair to prop his feet on. “Something big must be happening.”

“Can I take your order?” the waitress asked when she arrived, pulling a writing pad from her apron’s pocket.

…

Whatever Xiumin had been about to order was cut off by a loud beeping, a distress signal in Morse code. It rang throughout the civilian-style atrium and Sehun knew it would be audible in the hangars and for many miles around the base, traveling through space easily to other, nearby bases.

Emergency! Security personnel please report to your stations. Pilots--

The man’s frightened voice was cut off; the microphone must have been ripped from his hand.

Sorry for the inconvenience, said a familiar voice. There is no emergency. The coup d’etat has been completed.

The pad dropped from the waitress’s hands and they moved to cover instead, which was working open and closed in shock.

“,” Sehun swore, standing. The others followed suit, but the waitress ran back into the cafe. Confusion was breaking out throughout the atrium, but the four pilots of EXO only waited, straining to hear the next announcement.

It didn’t come.

…

The rest of the day felt like they were living some sort of illusion, with all official activity ceasing but everything else remaining normal--the cafeteria ran but training exercises were cancelled, nobody there to open the hangars; officers disappeared from the hallways but pilots and civilians continued to stroll, lost.

Then while Luhan was pacing in the dorm room with the others, Onew walked in with news, and everyone immediately sat up, waiting for him to speak.

“Well,” he said. “There hasn’t been any time for announcements all day because we were busy sorting out troublemakers from the ranks and securing all of our other bases. We still need to send some garrison forces to the bases on Earth, but they’re working on that now. The main leaders of the coup are holding a meeting in a hour, so if you want to get a good view you should start for the atrium now.”

He began to leave, but Suho interrupted him.

“Wait,” he said. “Troublemakers?”

Onew paused, one hand on the doorframe. “Pilots who supported the old regime. They’re dangerous to our next plans.”

“What plans?” D.O. asked quietly.

“Justice,” Onew replied, walking out the door and into the hallway, the heels of his shoes making a muffled sort of clacking noise against the metal floor.

…

The pilots of the UNPC were assembled in the atrium, and the civilians had been ordered to their rooms, though whether willingly or at gunpoint no one knew. TVXQ, the leaders of the coup d’etat, held the floor.

“If you read the UNPC’s charter, which I’m sure none of you have because we’ve all been too brainwashed, you’ll find that we’re doing a damn lousy job of following it,” Changmin began, his voice echoing throughout the atrium and over the heads of all the assembled pilots, before sinking into their minds and to the gravity plates underfoot.

D.O. shifted his weight from one foot to another uneasily and accidentally knocked Baekhyun’s elbow with his own.

“Sorry,” he muttered, looking forward again to where Yunho had taken the microphone.

“We’re supposed to be protecting the world, but while innocent people are dying down on Earth we’re hiding up here in space from a couple of Russians and Chinese that aren’t even attacking us.”

A murmur of agreement ran through the room, and D.O. found himself agreeing as well. The thing was, he had never really thought about what the UNPC was supposed to be doing. He had only ever wanted adventure, to pilot a mech and feel the thrill of battle, and if the UNPC gave that to him he was happy enough to follow his orders without complaint.

“Think about what your parents said when you decided to enlist,” Yunho said on the platform at the head of the atrium. “They were proud of you, right? Because the UNPC protects the weak and polices the strong, and they said good job, you’re doing the right thing.”

While D.O. may not have agreed with the previous statement so much, he certainly agreed with that one. His parents had been reluctant at first when he had announced he was going to become a pilot, but when he had added that he was joining the UNPC and the SM regiment to boot, they quickly agreed to support him. He still remembered the look on their faces when he had packed his bags to move to the SM dorms, and he realized then that that look would have disappeared the second they heard about the UNPC’s retreat into space.

He added his voice to the increasing swell of agreement.

…

Finally we’re getting somewhere, Baekhyun thought to himself when he looked to his left and saw D.O, always one of EXO’s more cautious, nodding his head in agreement with the rest of them. Finally we’re going to be doing something instead of sitting around all day.

“Well my parents said the same thing to me when I enlisted.” Changmin had the microphone again. “And I was so excited to be part of something greater. I was ready to work hard for the greater good. Only as the years passed I realized that we were sleeping four hours a night and missing holidays for nothing. All the missions we were sent on benefited the UNPC’s commanders in some monetary way, and from what we could see none of them benefited normal citizens in any way. Everywhere we went we would stop the conflict and then hand the government over to some rich family or group of military leaders that would donate to the UNPC later on as a form of ‘gratitude’.”

Changmin handed the mike back to Yunho again, and Baekhyun tapped his foot impatiently, wanting to be moving already.

“Well, the other members of TVXQ noticed that too,” Yunho said. “So as you all know a few years ago they took off and formed their own organization. It wasn’t like all the commanders said, that they were cowards. They were just biding their time for an opportunity like this, with pilots outnumbering officers five to one, and the officers being distracted ones at that. We’re forming a new UNPC, a better one, and you can choose to be a part of it or not.”

At this point the remaining members filed on the platform, grinning like they were happy to be back. Baekhyun recognized them from pictures and articles, and a few glimpses back in his training days: Jaejoong, Yoochun, and Junsu.

“Hey everyone,” Yoochun said into the mike. “We brought an army for you.”

…

They had brought an army, it turned out. JYJ, as the rogue pilots had been named, had somehow managed to get a hold of two hundred mass production mobile suits and the pilots to man them, and they added to the UNPC’s already considerable force of a thousand mass production suits and fifteen hundred custom suits. And while that fact certainly made their situation seem that much brighter, Tao still felt a twinge of unease at these sudden developments.

“So everyone,” Jaejoong said, snatching the mike from Yoochun. “This is how things are gonna work from now on.”

“There’s no more commands coming from way up top,” Junsu said, pressing his head close to Jaejoong’s so they could share the mike. “We’re all on the same level now.”

“The pilots get to vote on what we do and how we do it,” Yunho said, trying to re-establish some control by taking the mike back.

Someone found another mike and handed it to Yoochun. He added, “And we’ll split up missions between all the teams and it’s going to depend on you guys how it turns out. Do a good job, and you get a better mission next time. Mess up, and you get a worse one if we end up having to save your sorry butts.”

Continuing to pass the mike between themselves, they went on to explain the direct democracy the UNPC was turning into, how each pilot, team, and regiment would have a say in the decision making. They explained how missions would work from then on, with mission plans being presented, approved, and then assigned to a specific team or group of teams. They also stated the UNPC’s two main priorities at that moment in time: to secure bases in space and on Earth, and to quell the fighting in the Caribbean.

“Any questions?” Changmin asked in Yunho’s mike when they were done.

Before anyone had a chance to say anything, Yoochun said, “None? Okay, everyone back to your dorms. You’ll be getting mission assignments tomorrow. We need to sort out the issues we have now, and then we’ll start figuring out what to do next together.”

Tao did not like the sound of that, the sudden chaos that followed that announcement and the chaos he was sure would follow in the weeks to come. He could just feel the same panic he had felt when his air tank had ruptured, and he could hear his life fizzling out of the air tank. But when he turned to talk to someone, the rest of EXO was already heading back to the dorms, chattering excitedly.

…

When they reached the dorms and everyone was together again, Suho was ready to do some damage control. When he looked to Kris for help though, the older boy was biting his lip and looked like he was in deep thought.

Sighing, he raised his voice and shouted over the din, “You know this means I’m still in charge, right guys?”

Most of the talking died down and everyone looked in his direction. Chen blinked at him innocently.

“Of course we know that, hyung,” he said. “We’re still going to follow you, even if we’re supposed to be on the same level and all now.”

Suho his lips nervously. “Good. Uh.... well it sounds like we’re going to be deployed soon, again. So you all better get some rest because we don’t want be the ones having our butts saved.”

Everyone stared at him blankly, until Kris spoke.

“It’s okay guys,” he said. “We’re making history here, Suho. Give them a rest; it’ll probably take a long time for them to organize everything anyway.”

Suho was speechless at Kris’s sudden leniency, but the rest of the room broke into talking once more.

…

It turned out Kris was wrong about them needing a lot of time to organize, because EXO was ordered back to Earth the next morning along with a host of other teams. It didn’t matter that all of them were bone tired though, because they ran on adrenaline through breakfast and before any of them knew it they were boarding a cargo ship for Earth.

Chen sat at the very end of EXO’s line of seats, wedged between Lay and Daehyun from BAP because he was the first EXO member onboard. Unfortunately for him, Lay fell asleep as soon as the ship took off and Daehyun was occupied in conversation with Youngjae, whom Chen couldn’t see well enough to talk to. He did, however, manage to get BAP’s destination out of Daehyun as he got back from the bathroom--Thailand.

In the end he spent a lot of the trip musing about his own destination--Cuba. EXO had been informed they would only be on standby as more experienced teams handled the fighting in the east, but Chen knew from the news that fighting had slowly spilled west, intensifying in Haiti and reaching as far south as Jamaica. In other words, it was very likely that EXO would be seeing some action in the near future.

Chen smoothed the mission outline in his hands and looked at the list of teams involved in the Caribbean. The Wonder Girls, Big Bang, U-Kiss, and SHINee were going to be handling the actual fighting. EXO, 2PM, After School, and Miss A would be on standby. Those teams amounted to half of the teams on board the ship, with the other half moving to other bases once the ship touched down in the UNPC’s main Earth base in Korea. Private-level reinforcements would arrive on later flights, but with any luck the UNPC would have the element of surprise, using only its own resources to deploy forces, and those reinforcements wouldn’t be needed.

Chen glanced at the list of teams in the Caribbean again. It was a good group, its many experienced pilots making the success rate very high. However, that also made EXO the only team with less than three years of experience, and though this made Chen uneasy he tried not to think about it and tucked the mission outline back into his jacket pocket.

…

Kai woke up from his position on D.O.’s shoulder while the ship was landing, sending up gusts of wind that blew the nearby trees on the ground.

“You drool,” D.O. commented, smirking, as Kai rubbed his eyes and sat back up.

“Shut up,” Kai muttered back, yawning. “Are we here already?”

D.O. nodded. “We’re having a layover here for a day, so the mobile suits can be reloaded. I think we’re staying in a hotel until then.”

“Oh.”

The ship finally landed and Kris called over everyone’s heads, “Don’t forget anything, kids! I’m not coming back with you if you lose anything!”

Everybody mentally facepalmed as BAP and AOA turned to see who had spoken like a tourist yelling at his children.

“We’re leaving now!” Chen shouted, and suddenly Kai was being pushed by Baekhyun as Chen forced all of the members out of their row.

“Calm down!” Chanyeol bellowed back, and everybody facepalmed for real.

…

From the landing center EXO was ushered into two vans and brought to a hotel, where they were split two to a bed and four to a room, three rooms in all. Chanyeol had slept the whole night through, unlike most of EXO, in addition to the sleep he received on the cargo ship, so he wasn’t tired at all when he reached his room with Baekhyun, Xiumin, and Tao.

“Who’s in charge of us now?” Baekhyun asked as they sat in their beds. “I mean, we drove ourselves here and everything. All they gave us were instructions.”

Xiumin shrugged. “We’re in charge of ourselves now, remember? I guess they just expect us to get the job done.”

“But what about everyone else that usually travels with us?” Chanyeol demanded. “Private-rank pilots, mechanics, tacticians...”

“I guess they’re coming in on a different flight.”

Chanyeol shook his head. “This is too weird.”

“Couldn’t agree more,” Tao said, falling back onto his pillow.

That night Chanyeol didn’t get much sleep, either from excitement or simply because he wasn’t tired. In the morning EXO ate breakfast together in the lobby, where they saw a few other pilots from the UNPC, and drove back to the landing center, where their mobile suits had been loaded onto a flight headed for the Caribbean. They all groaned at the prospect of another flight but boarded the plane without complaint, half excited and half anxious.

…

“Hey, we’ve just arrived in Cuba,” Luhan said a few hours later, elbowing Kris in the stomach while he looked out the window. “It looks horrible out there.”

Kris yawned and stretched. “I’m sure. Cuba’s been isolated from international trade since the Treaty of Buenos Aires in 2143.”

Luhan sniffed as they grabbed their bags from the overhead compartments. “I knew that.”

The airport was just as Kris had imagined it, small, run-down, and reminiscent of a toilet. It was a far cry from the modern architecture and holographic commercials of Asia’s airports, and he was pretty sure none of the members, himself included, had ever been to such a place. And when he saw the others’ faces he knew it wasn’t exactly the glamorous image TVXQ’s speech had conjured in their minds. Suho snapped out of it the fastest, clearing his throat and continuing in the direction of the exit after Miss A, who had had the seats in front of them on the plane.

“Come on!” he called over his shoulder, and Kris grinned as he followed.

Suddenly there was a tap on his shoulder and Lay was talking to him in disapproving Chinese.

“So this is the glorious mission we were sent on? On an island whose only inhabitants are a couple of old men sitting on the beach drinking rum?”

Kris clapped Lay on the shoulder. “Welcome to the Caribbean, mate.”

A/N: One Game of Thrones reference, one Pirates of the Caribbean reference. Bonus points to whoever can find them.