“Please tell me what’s going on,” Ravi said, causing Yuri to stop dead in her tracks. They were between the shifter training grounds and the multipurpose training grounds. Ravi had been trying to get answers all week, but no one had told him anything. Now was his chance to get information out of the one person guaranteed to know what was going on around here.

“What do you mean?” she asked, turning around so that she could face him and Hongbin.

“N hyung has been hanging out with Sori a lot,” Hongbin explained, “no matter where she is, it seems like he’s always right beside her or a few steps away.”

“Oh,” she replied, “that.”

“What do you mean ‘oh that,’ Yuri?” Ravi narrowed his eyes slightly, “is N hyung in danger? Is that why he’s always around Sori?”

“I can’t say anything,” the fae girl replied, “It’s not your problem.”

“So then N hyung isn’t in danger?” Hongbin asked, “Because if he is, then that concerns us. He’s like our brother. It’s like how you and Sori are with each other.”

“Please,” Ravi asked once more, “if our hyung is in danger, we need to know.”

“He’s not in any immediate danger,” Yuri admitted, “so please just let it go.”

Ravi was about to say something else when a gun shot went off. Ravi and Hongbin both dropped to the ground, but when no other shots rang out they started looking around. Both their eyes locked on Yuri’s form, a feeling of terror taking over both of them.

Yuri stood in the same place she had been before the shot was fired. However now she was holding her chest as blood flowed out between her fingers. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened. She’d been hit by the bullet. If she was the target or just unlucky was something to be figured out later.

Hongbin rushed to her side as she dropped to her knees. Ravi moved to her other side while the younger started trying to heal her. he knew he wouldn’t be able to heal the wound completely – he wasn’t skilled enough for that yet – but he could at least slow the bleeding and keep her alive long enough for them to get to the medical building.

“You need to carry her,” Hongbin told Ravi, “we need to get her to the medical building.

“We aren’t going to make it in time,” Ravi replied, looking around like he expected to see the shooter, “not like this.”

“YURI!” both turned to find Kris running up to them with Suho right behind.

“What happened?” Suho asked, “who did this?”

“No idea,” Ravi growled, “we heard a gunshot and the next thing we knew Yuri had been hit. Hongbin’s trying to heal as much of the damage as he can.”

“Take her to the medical building,” Kris told Suho before running off, transforming as he went.

Ravi glanced at Yuri once more before following. Kris was clearly planning to chase down the shooter himself. He’d have better luck with Ravi along to sniff him out. The young shifter might not have much experience in tracking, but he could tell the scent of a stranger when he smelled it and could follow that pretty well.

“Come on,” Suho helped Hongbin lift Yuri up, “I’ll change and you can ride on my back. Flying is faster than running.”

Hongbin did as told, mentally taking note of how Suho’s dragon form differed from Kris’ dragon form. It was weird how your brain noticed little things like that in a crisis.

--

“She’s going to be alright,” Jihu told the group waiting outside the medical building, “but they’ve got her in a medical coma for now.”

“Thank god,” Hyuna dropped to the ground, not even trying to fight the tears of relief at the news, “she’s going to be fine.”

“What did you do to the shooter?” Chen asked Kris and Ravi who were both leaning against the wall with matching scowls.

“We didn’t get the chance,” Kris hissed, “He blew his own brains out before we could touch him.”

“We had him cornered,” Ravi added, “The coward knew he wasn’t going to get away.”

“How did he even get onto school grounds?” Lina asked, glancing around nervously as she hugged Chanyeol’s arm tighter, “I thought the security system was supposed to prevent things like that.”

“It is,” Suho nodded, “and Hyoyeon’s been reviewing everything. By all accounts, he shouldn’t have been able to get on the grounds.”

“We think we know where he entered,” Jihu explained, “but he shouldn’t have been able to because that’s where I had at least three agents plus two security cameras. He shouldn’t have been able to do it, but it’s like he walked right past them.”

“I’d like to see the tapes,” Sori spoke, the first words she’d said since hearing about Yuri’s situation, “I want to see for myself how he got here.”

“There’s not much to see,” Hyoyeon shrugged, “all you see is a slight distortion that walks right pass the agents and through the fence. You don’t even notice it at first, it take a few views before you see it.”

“That doesn’t sound like any magic I know,” Sooyoung frowned, “there isn’t a spell that good in existence. And even then, using invisibility spells and incorporeal spells is illegal by order of the witch council.”

“This guy shot someone,” Taeyang frowned at her, “I don’t think he cares what spells are illegal or not.” She frowned at him, but let the subject drop when she noticed the look on Sori’s face.

“I still want to see them,” Sori finally said before walking towards the school. Jihu sighed before following her.

“I can’t believe this happened,” Baekhyun sighed, taking a seat on the ground beside Hyuna, “I never would have thought someone would try to shoot Yuri.”

“Why not her?” Heesun countered, “She’s a perfectly good target.”

“Heesun!” Xiumin yelled after noticing the looks on Kris and Hyuna’s faces, “please.”

“What?” she scoffed, “it’s true. Thanks to her telepathy, she’s a really good threat for anyone who’d want to attack Dark Lake.”

“She’s right,” Kris nodded, glaring at the ground, “Yuri might not be psychically strong like myself, Sori, Suho, or even Ravi, but she makes up for it with her gift.”

“If someone was attacking, she’d be able to read their mind once they got close enough,” Chen nodded in agreement, moving to pat Kris’ shoulder in hopes of making him feel better, “that makes her a top choice for elimination.”

“I should have realized that,” Kris sighed before walking off. Hyuna got up and rushed after him.

N watched the pair go. If anyone should have realized what was going to happen, it should have been him. He was the one who talked to ghosts, ghosts that warned him that something bad was going to happen. Maybe if he’d just worked a little harder, he could have gotten his ghost thinking straight. Then the ghost could have told him exactly what was going to happen.

“Don’t blame yourself,” Sehun said, taking a seat beside him, “you couldn’t have known. And you aren’t the only one who had a ghost warn them about danger. My ghost was as clear as your ghost was.”

N nodded, but he didn’t believe the necro for a minute. N’s ghost had probably given him more information than Sehun’s ghost had given him. So how could he not have figured it out? Looking back, it was all so obvious now; Yuri was clearly the target.

She’s going to be so hurt.

Well, Sori was hurting for sure. He’d seen the look in her eyes when she gotten word of Yuri’s condition. She looked so broken at the thought of losing the other girl. The ghost hadn’t lied about that. N recalled the ghost’s warning that whoever had killed him didn’t want ‘her’ to know of their plan. He’d thought at the time he was referring to Sori, but now it was clear he meant Yuri.

How hadn’t N seen this coming? Was he too blinded by a crush on Sori to consider everything? Was he that big a fool?

Glancing at the medical building, he figured that the answer was ‘yes.’

“I want to see Sori,” he finally said, getting up and walking off in the same direction she’d gone moments before.

A/N: even though it would make a really short chapter, I was really tempted to end things at the ‘Yuri’s just been shot’ part. Mostly just to mess with all of you. Now, answer me honestly: who thought Yuri was the target? Or at least thought it wasn’t Sori?