The other members naturally had questions about D.O. not joining them for the filming, but Lay was able to conjure up some lie about the OST recording being tentatively back on and D.O. being needed there in case they could do it. Chanyeol and Tao didn’t put enough thought into it to ask any more questions, and Kai and Suho knew better than to. Chen was there waiting for them when they arrived; thankfully, he had left so early that he was unaware that there had ever been a change in D.O.’s original plans.

The recording was fantastic with the six of them, as they faced off against each other in various 3-on-3, K-versus-M team sports, with the ultimate victor being M, to the enjoyment of heavy cheater Tao and the disapproval of light(er) cheaters Chanyeol and Kai.

Upon arriving back home, Chen didn’t even bother stepping foot inside of the dorm; instead he grabbed his bicycle and after only just saying goodbye to the rest of his friends, took his leave for the train station that would take him to his girlfriend’s house.

Lay and Kai, who had already been informed of Lay’s plans for the evening, waited until Suho and the other two tired and distracted members had gone back inside before grabbing their own bikes. Lay had reconsidered D.O.’s idea to tell the rest of the members what was going on, and he knew that once they got situated inside, Suho would be bringing everyone up to speed on the plan. By the time Chen came home, all the others would have to do anyway was pretend to be asleep.

They followed as far as they could while still being able to keep Chen in either sight or, when they started to get to the areas with more light, Lay’s senses. All parties had opted to change into less conspicuous clothing after filming was complete, but only Chanyeol and Tao had chosen the option out of comfort.

When they arrived at the train station, Baekhyun was already waiting for them there, himself well-disguised as just another black-haired young 20-something in the crowd, though the sunglasses at 7 p.m. winter time were rather suspiscious. Lay and Kai slowed down just long enough to make sure that he had recognized them, and he quickly fell into what was now a group of three. As the text message he had received implored him, he didn’t ask any questions, he merely followed, scanned his train pass when he got to the gate, and kept following until they were safely on the same relatively unpopulated train Chen had boarded.

Baekhyun pulled the back of the convertible seat to the other side to create a booth in which they could all sit, and he took his place across from Lay and Kai, inertia pulling him slightly forward when the train started to roll out of the station. Silently, he held out his hands to ask the obvious question.

The train ride was only about 20 minutes long, but it was plenty long enough to bring Baekhyun up to date and get his consent to help.

“Oh, he’s getting off,” Lay commented, and the boys rushed to stand up, but quickly realized they were being too animated as Chen was only one of three other people to leave the train at this stop. Hiding behind an ill-lit pillar until Chen had gone far enough down the escalator to not notice anyone following him, the three breathed a sigh of relief as they resumed pursuit.

While a few five- to ten-story buildings sat around the station, the area they’d stopped at appeared to be a rather suburban-looking one. They could see Chen meet a girl in front of a taxi as they had just scanned their passes to exit the station. Although she looked happy to see him, they both ducked into the cab quickly.

“, we can’t follow them in a car,” Kai hissed. “What now?”

“I don’t think we have to,” Lay replied, focusing intently on the car that billowed white smoke into the chilly air as it drove off.

“What do you mean?”

“Ten minutes by taxi,” he murmured, recalling previous messages with Chen in which he’d stated the transit time between his girlfriend’s house and the station. “That’s probably less than ten kilometers.”

“…Sometimes I think you refuse to make sense on purpose,” Baekhyun concluded.

But Kai could see where Lay was going with his assessment.

“Let him concentrate for a second,” Kai said, hushing Baekhyun. “I think he’s trying to track Chen.”

By a 'second', he clearly meant around eight and a half minutes, because that’s how long it took before Lay finally offered Kai the palm of his hand.

Kai laid his fingertips to the surface of the pale skin. “Farthest out yet," he remarked, understanding the coordinates. "That’s impressive.”

Lay smiled and nodded slightly in acknowledgement. “Good luck, you two.”

Kai lifted his eyebrows. “You’re not coming with us?”

“I only needed to stay as long as we needed to track him. You know where to go now. I need to make sure everything is okay back at the dorm.”

“Alright. Safe travels,” Kai said before allowing Lay to go back into the station.

He turned to Baekhyun. “You ready?”

“If ‘ready’ involves what I think it does, then no…” he whined.

“Come on, it’s fine, I promise! You won't get 'scrambled' or whatever,” Kai said, adding a mocking tone for the word 'scrambled'.

Baekhyun’s mouth refused to leave the pout it was set into as he offered Kai his hands.

“Thank you kindly,” Kai smiled, and before Baekhyun had a chance to reconsider, the two vanished from the front of the empty train station right as the new arrivals were just about to approach.

“This is boring,” Baekhyun whispered.

The two lay prone as they looked into the basement apartment window. Cobwebs had covered the small, grime-coated rectangle, but upon realizing that their occupants were long gone, Kai had grabbed the nearest twig and made miniature cotton candy out of them before tossing the stick aside. An hour of boredly watching the duo do the various boring and not-so-boring-but-kind-of-awkward things couples do, as well as some very strange things that (while it was easy to get the impression that the entire evening had been,) were clearly only being done because Chen was commanding them.

The apartment, while still obviously a basement, had clearly been furnished to the best of the girl’s ability and budget. It immediately struck the two as odd that Chen would have not only met but been dating a girl like this. They could see her, as well. She was pretty, but through the layer of makeup they could tell that her looks were merely the low end of “good-looking,” and her low-5’, 50-kilo frame might have been something special to see if they were just average guys themselves. Chen was the type of ladies man who turned down dates with gorgeous, svelte, perfect tens (about whom Chanyeol cried because they were never interested in him) solely because he had too many offers. This girl-next-door, who by their standards was an eight tops, had them baffled.

“I know,” Kai whispered back.

“You guys think you’re the only two who’re bored; how do you think it feels to be me?”

They looked up, but were only able to register Sehun’s form before it landed full-force from the height of the building onto their backs.

Or the space where there backs were, as Kai had, in that split second he had to react, bridged the two-inch gap between his hand and Baekhyun’s in order to teleport them both out of there.

The residual swirling of the fluids in his ear made Baekhyun wretch as it had previousy, but he was able to gain his composure long enough to avoid a punch of air sent his way.

“Sehun, tell us why you’re doing this!” Kai offered in a yell as he steadied himself after dodging the attack.

“Is ‘because I can’ not good enough for you, hyung?” he asked. “Anyway, if you really want to know, I suppose I’ll tell you, but you’ll have to catch me again first. That is, if you can survive.”

The distraction worked. Kai and Baekhyun didn’t noticed the clay pots that had been blown from the rooftop garden and that were now hurtling toward their targets.

They would have connected, if not their trajectories having been redirected toward Sehun.

He didn’t have time to react, and he took the pots full-force, one to the rib cage and the other nearly square to the head. Yelling out, he fell to the ground, world fading out before him.

Kai teleported himself just in time to block D.O. from jumping in for the fatal slice to Sehun’s jugular. The latter grunted in pain as his clavicle screamed uncle when it unexpectedly collided with Kai's shoulder.

“We’re not killing him, and what are you doing here,” he demanded, D.O.’s wrist in his hand, crouched down on one knee in a pose that had met its intention of bringing the other to a full stop.

The older stopped struggling against Kai, falling backwards from his position crouched to kill on the balls of his feet, and assuming a standing one instead. He was just about to open his mouth to explain, when a burst of flame out around the corner.

“So Chanyeol came to play too, huh,” Chen could be heard, and then seen growling, lips twisted in a less-sane version of his ever-present catty grin. The lightning cackling around his hand indicated that he’d been ambushed while trying to revive the ambush Sehun had made on Baekhyun and Kai.

“You think we were going to let two guys without offensive powers go up against these two freaks?” D.O. answered Kai in a low voice.

“You two need to get somewhere safe,” Chanyeol said, finally making his location known. “We can take Chen by ourselves.”

Kai looked around to see the lights come on more and more rapidly in the other apartments.

“Not just yet.”

He disappeared in a flash, and before Chen realized what was happening, the scenery around him changed from a low-income apartment block to that of a mountainside field. Sehun’s still barely-conscious figure appeared, and he could have sworn he saw Kai’s shadow for a split second before his attention was distracted by those of D.O., Chanyeol, and Kai appearing before him, the former two seeming equally surprised by their new surroundings.

“We can’t fight in a neighborhood. I’ll be back soon with help. I promise.”

Kai’s being fluttered out of the scene, and D.O. and Chanyeol immediately ducked to dodge the lightning bolt they knew was headed their way, before preparing for attack themselves.

Kai panted slightly as he reappeared before Baekhyun. He took into notice the rapidly approaching mob of Chen’s girlfriend’s angry, cranky neighbors.

“Come on!” He locked hands with the older and tugged him as he started running for the small nook of a doorstep across the alley. Immediately upon Baekhyun’s figure disappearing into the shadows, Kai removed them both from the situation.

They reached the dorm with Kai on his hands and knees, gasping for breath.

“Jongin!” Suho yelled out, the first to realize something was amiss. Tao, Xiumin, and Lay weren’t far behind, rushing over from their guarded but leisurely position to check on their teammate.

“I’m… fine…” he managed to get out. “Just… energy…”

Lay, despite the protests he knew Suho might have, immediately set to transferring some of his own energy to Kai. Tracking Chen had taken quite a bit out of him, but he’d spent all of his free time since speaking with Kian amassing as much energy as he possibly could, knowing he would need it if things turned sour, which they seemed to have had.

If Suho had any complaints, he was far more interested in hearing the story from Baekhyun than he was in fussing with Lay.

“Sehun ambushed us D.O. ambushed him Chen tried to ambush us three but Chanyeol ambushed him before he got the chance,” Baekhyun said, beginning to pant after his breathless sentence (combined with the realization that he’d forgotten to breathe since their arrival.)

"But D.O. and Chanyeol are in their rooms," Tao commented, confused by Baekhyun's explanation.

"Well if they told you that, they lied."

Lay sighed. "I needed D.O. to stay here..."

“No talk time," grunted Kai. "We need to go.”

“It’ll take forty minutes to-“

“Hands,” Kai demanded, forking one of his up into Lay’s face, cutting off his musing.

“Kai, you’re in no shape to teleport all of us. You can’t-“

“No, I can’t, but we can.”

Kai and Lay had never put their abilities together before in this way, but the type of energy transfer Kai was inferring he wanted to try was a simple one. Lay had easily operated as a battery of sorts for others in the group; doing so for Kai should be no different. Transporting six people at once, however, was of dubious feasibility, even with their combined energy.

“Now.”

The others shot looks between themselves as they nervously joined hands. Xiumin and Lay, who had Kai’s hands, pulled him to his feet.

“We’re totally ed, aren’t we.”

Suho sent a glare at Baekhyun, and another at Tao for nodding his head.

That was the last thing any of them did before the group vanished.