Luhan stares blankly for a few moments, not entirely comprehending what Xiumin had just told him.

“What?” he finally manages to stammer, “Rebellion?”

“Yeah, I mean, I thought you already knew your parents were rebels,” Xiumin says, eyebrows furrowing together.

“No, I already knew that, but why do I have to be the leader?” Luhan’s heart beats faster, his words catching in his throat. He’s never considered being a leader—never thought he had what it took. He prefers staying behind the scenes, backing up the others but never really standing out among the crowd.

But here, right before his very eyes, a man stands, telling him that he has to take control of a rebel group.

“It’s your legacy,” Xiumin says simply, with a small shrug. “Who else is going to do it? It’s your place, your birthright to take control.”

“Can’t the person who was leading before do it? I bet they probably did a fine job of things, I mean, look at all…” Luhan glances quickly around the room, trying to spot something that he could use to try and draw attention away from him, but all he sees is a figure wearing a welding mask, curly orange hair peeking out the top.

“…this?” Luhan finishes feebly, gesturing weakly in the general direction on the orange-haired person.

Xiumin laughs, shaking his head at Luhan. “You’re funny. But no, Chanyeol would be the worst leader ever. And that’s putting it nicely.”

“Hey! I’m not that bad!” The orange-haired man—Chanyeol, Luhan presumed—lifts his mask up, his deep voice not matching in the slightest with his childish pout and round eyes.

“Um,” Luhan says, unable to say much of anything else.

“In any case,” Xiumin sighs, “I guess I should show you around. There really isn’t much here, but we’re all pretty proud of ourselves.”

“Quick question,” Luhan cuts in, “how have you guys not been found by the government? Aren’t they supposed to know everything?”

“As far as the government is concerned, we’re all dead,” Xiumin says, the easy smile slipping off his face, his eyes darkening. “You heard a few years ago, a high school and a nearby office building exploded?”

Luhan nods; it had been plastered all over the news at the time. The government had never been able to figure out the exact cause of the blast, and it remained a mystery that had yet to be solved.

“It was actually a staged blast. All the other students and workers were evacuated before the blast, and fake bodies were placed to take the place of us. All of us have parents who are committed to the rebellion, but you probably won’t see them. They’re usually off doing administrative-y stuff.”

Luhan blinks several times in quick succession, trying to take in all the information that had just been shoved at him in the span of barely five minutes.

“There’s a total of twelve, including you—you know Zitao, Yifan, Yixing, and Jongdae? They and I are the outside agents. The rest of the guys stay here all the time.”

“But all of them are still registered citizens,” Luhan says, skeptical. How could his best friends have hidden something from him for this long?

“Like I said, we need outside agents. I’m just a special case. Come on, I’ll introduce you to the rest of the crew. You’ve already met Chanyeol, over there,” Xiumin says, nodding in the said man’s direction. Chanyeol just rolls his eyes, slides his mask back on, and gets back to welding sheets of metal together.

“Let me just warn you, the crew can get pretty weird.”

“How weird?”

“Well, you’ll just have to find out now, won’t you?”

Luhan feels worse already.

~*~*~*~*~

Xiumin leads him outside of the garage area, which apparently also doubled as their building area.

“We don’t have a whole lot of space, just the garage and that house over there—anything else, and we risk raising suspicion, no matter how good our cloaking tech is. We share bedrooms, two to a room, except me. I get my own.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t like sharing. Oh, here’s Suho’s office.”

“Suho? It’s a weird name,” Luhan says, furrowing his eyebrows as Xiumin knocks once on the door and pulls it open.

“Hey Joon, I’ve brought Luhan.”

“How many times have I told you, stop calling me that,” the man sighs good-naturedly, setting down a pen and leaning back slightly in his chair. “Hello, Luhan. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Hi,” Luhan replied, bowing toward the man. “And you are…”

“I’m Suho. Or Joonmyun. Whatever you want to call me.” Joonmyun smiles gently, almost in a paternal way. “Although Min’s the oldest, I usually end up taking care of everyone since he’s gone a lot. I’m the oldest of the lot that stays here.”

“Whatever you do, don’t call him Junmahao, though,” Xiumin snickers, and Joonmyun throws a pen at him, which he deftly catches.

“Junmahao?”

“Zitao called him that the first time he heard Joonmyun’s name. No idea how he managed to mess it up that badly, though.” Xiumin shrugs, waving at Joonmyun before placing a hand on the small of Luhan’s back and leading him out of the room. “Kitchen’s over here, where the three youngest usually hang out. Sometimes Baekhyun hangs out with them too, but he’s probably sleeping right now. He had a long night.”

Xiumin pushes open another door, revealing two lanky figures bickering with each other, and another shorter man who just rolls his eyes at the two as he peeks at something in the oven.

“Kyungsoo, Sehun, and Jongin,” Xiumin says, but makes no indication of who is who. “Kyungsoo’s the resident cook ‘cause none of us trust bots to make out food and we can’t cook anything but ramen anyway, and Sehun and Jongin are here for entertainment.”

“You .” The darker-skinned of the two sticks his tongue out at Xiumin, who merely scoffs in amusement.

“I’m Sehun. That’s Jongin. And the guy making cookies is Kyungsoo.” Sehun brushes his pink-tinted bangs out of his eyes, and that’s when it finally hits Luhan—all of them have oddly tinted or styled hair. Joonmyun’s was dark red, Chanyeol’s was orange, Jongin has midnight blue streaks cutting through his think black locks, and Kyungsoo's got some sort of zig-zagged pattern etched into the side of his hair.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Kyungsoo says, smiling sincerely as he pulls a tray of chocolate-chip cookies out of the oven. “We’ve been expecting you for a while.”

“I see,” Luhan says, his mouth watering at the scent of the cookies, and with a quick glance at the clock on the wall, Luhan realizes that he hasn’t eaten anything since lunch.

“Would you like a cookie?” Kyungsoo asks, wrapping one in a napkin and holding it out toward Luhan. “Don’t worry, it’s not poisoned.”

“It better not be,” Xiumin grumbles, “I put a lot of work into finding this guy.”

Jongin and Sehun laugh, as though this is some sort of regular occurrence for them. “Stop being such a stick in the mud,” Jongin says. “You’re boring.”

Sehun raises his eyebrows suggestively and glances at Luhan, prompting Xiumin to reach into his pocket and throw something at him—Luhan recognizes it as the pen from Joonmyun’s office when Sehun catches it and starts twirling it between his fingers.

“Best be careful, hyung, or someone else might snap him up.”

Before Luhan can ask him what he means by that, Xiumin’s already turned nearly as red as his hair, and he all but pushes Luhan all the way across the room and out the door.

“Brats,” Xiumin mutters. “They’ve never learned how to shut up.”

...well, i'm extremely inconsistent with updating. sorry guys.

i'll be able to get on a more regular schedule during the summer, i'm hitting the last stretch of school now and for some reason teachers like hurling projects in the last month of school. i have no idea why, but they do. it .

another filler-y chapter, but i needed to introduce everyone somehow haha. hopefully this chapter cleared up a some stuff for everyone! i'm notoriously bad at keeping track of things that happen during my stories, so if anything doesn't make sense to you, let me know and i'll fix it.