Kris’ eyes slowly roll themselves open, meeting with an expanse of bright blue sky.  For a moment, it calms him.

Then he remembers what he had seen and instantly shoots upright, only to be met with the girl herself sitting cross legged in front of him.  Immediately he lets out a yelp and scoots a few feet backwards in fear.  “Where am I?” he asks frantically.

“You’re asleep,” she answers simply.

“It doesn’t feel like I’m asleep,” he retorts, observing his surroundings.  The two are in a vast plain of green grass, almost as if they were in untouched territory.  On the horizon to his left, there seems to be a hill with a lone tree on top of it.  “Especially not with you here and me having control of my speech and my actions,” he rattles off nervously, his eyes darting all over the place.

“I’ve put you in a lucid sleep.  It's the only way I could get you to listen while still having control of your body,” the girl explains.  “I don’t want you to feel trapped.  I just want you to listen and learn.  I promise that I will not tell any lies to you, I’m laying all my cards on the table.”

“Who are you?” Kris asks accusingly.  “What do you mean you ‘put’ me in a lucid dream?  Why are you able to make things float around all over the place?  What the hell are you and why are you here?”

The girl’s face remains patient and calm despite his aggressive tone.  “It is not just who I am, but who you all are.  But very well, I will answer your questions.”  She folds her hands in her lap.  “My name is not Stephanie, but Park MinJi.  I was an old family friend of your and your brothers from when we were all very young.  I was never an amnesiac, I simply faked my backstory for the sake of getting Kyungsoo’s attention so I would get closer to you all.  I have been on Earth for six months looking for the twelve of you.  I am from a different planet called SK-12 in a distant galaxy in a country called Exopatri, and so are you and your eleven brothers.  We are - how do Earthling say? - aliens, extraterrestrials.”

Kris is baffled at this fact, but he can’t hide his skepticism.  “How do you know we’re aliens?” he retorts.

“Simple,” MinJi blinks.  “People from Exopatri have tattoos somewhere on their bodies that are only visible to other Exopians.  They appear out of nowhere painlessly and are fully formed by age 16.  Your parents and your maids don’t have these tattoos nor can they see them, which is why they never said anything about it to you.”

“So where’s yours?” Kris raises an eyebrow.

MinJi smirks.  “I don’t have just one, I have all of your tattoos plus my own.”  She pulls the collar of her shirt down past her collarbone, revealing a tattoo reflecting blue like the rest of theirs.  The perplexing image resembles something like a brain or a head, but the details make it difficult to know for sure.  “As for all of yours…”  She turns around on her knee and gathers her shirt over her head.

Kris gasps in awe and shock.

There, plain as day, are all of the brothers’ tattoo marks in order from oldest to youngest, arranged neatly in four rows of three from the tops of the girl’s shoulders to the small of her back and gleaming dark blue in the light.  The markings are so painstakingly similar copies of the boys’ tattoos that all of the leader’s doubts are erased.  This girl is obviously connected to all of them, and she bears their weight on her own back.

She replaces her shirt and turns back around to sit.  “You believe me now.”  It’s more of a statement than a question.

Kris is speechless.  “I’m sorry I doubted you,” he says somberly.

MinJi nods.  “I understand.  You’ve known Earth as your home for almost fifteen years and suddenly you’re told that you’re an alien.  I didn’t expect you to believe me so easily.”

The leader remains still, staring at the ground.  His head is swimming with this realization.  He and his brothers are not humans, their parents aren’t their real parents, Earth is not their home.  The man doesn’t know what to say to any of this.

Noticing that the leader has nothing to say, MinJi’s eyes unfocus themselves as she continues.  “Your real parents are the Kings and Queen of Exopatri.  The country is split into the K and M districts, and your mother married one man from each side, so some of you are half brothers.  When your fathers were young, they were the princes of each district.  They both fell in love with the only child of a humble farmer, your mother.  They married, became heirs to the throne, and bore six boys per king.  You all lived in the same castle in the capital, but you remain princes of your respective territories according to your birth father.

“My father was a merchant who was friends with your mother, and she allowed me to befriend you all.”  MinJi smiles happily at her memories.  “We were inseparable, I was like the sister you never had.  When Kyungsoo introduced me, I was surprised none of you remembered me, except Jongdae who only knew me as someone he sees in a dream.”

For the first time, Kris sees a glimpse of a fleeting emotion in the girl’s eyes, and it’s a deep penetrating sadness that he can tell she hides well.  But she blinks and the emotion is gone as if it never happened.  “But no matter, there’s no use dwelling on it,” she states.

The scene around them changes to a bustling city bathed in reflective blue-purple glass.  It looks similar to a city on Earth, except this city looks more modern and less angular.  People go about their business around the two teens.  MinJi stands up and strolls down the sidewalk.  Kris gets up and follows her.  He notices people passing by, how similar they look to humans; adults were dressed up going to work, children holding their parents’ hands, teens teasing and hanging onto each other.

“Exopatri was in a state of peace.  There was no war, no conflict between the districts, no strife among the rest of our planet.  People lived and laughed and worked as they normally would to make a livelihood.”  MinJi’s eyes darken and she stops in her place.  “But then, chaos struck.”

The city vanishes.  The blue sky turns blood red and a battle rages in a field around them, a giant aircraft looms above them menacingly.  "We were suddenly attacked by Cube, one of the neighboring countries.  We thought we had an alliance with them, but it seems they were secretly plotting against us all that time.  Even though the Queen already sensed that the attack was coming, we weren't ready.”  She stares down from the hill they’re standing on.  Soldiers brandish weapons with one hand and send summoned matter flying towards their enemies with the other.  Figures in cobalt blue robes deflect their attacks and use their own supernatural abilities to fight.  “Blood was shed on both sides.  Our military fought for weeks on end, but we were still overthrown."

The battle ceases and the city reappears, and Kris wants to cry at the carnage.  The city he was just in awe of is now in ruins; the buildings no longer reflect because of the smashed glass.  The cracked roads are stained with blood and dirt.  The city is completely abandoned except for lines of soldiers in the same cobalt blue robes.  "This is Exopatri after we were completely defeated,” MinJi states gravely.  ”Everything was destroyed.  The kings had died in battle and any survivors of the war were taken to Cube as prisoners.  There was no one left.”  She turns to face Kris.  “Except you twelve.  During the invasion, your mother saw that Cube was too powerful for us, and she quickly decided that you boys, as the princes of Exopatri, should flee to keep the bloodline alive and eventually return.  She was about to send me off with you in the capsules, but...things happened.”  MinJi’s eyes as she takes a deep, controlled breath at the memory.  “So the Queen and I were caught and imprisoned in Cube.”

She turns back around to face the carnage again, staring out at the horizon where a faint light shines.  "I stayed in that dreaded prison cell for 11 years, until I was 16.  It was a horrible and depressing place.  Every week, they would execute the prisone