***Update 1/4***

(Warning: angst incoming)

Emergency power-up was scheduled at just over half an hour rather than almost half a day, but as far as Jinsu was concerned, that still felt far too short.  As the doors all over the Attayear came hissing down and locked in place, Minseok dispatched Jinsu with a walkie-talkie so she could report on the situation.  Baekhyun probably would have been a better choice for the job, since he was actually capable of fighting off any attackers and there were five potential ones on the Attayear, but he was needed in case there were any electronic commands that needed his fingerprint.

Each of the compartments had a length of between four to six metres, depending on the size of the room that was being broken down, and on the wall of each was a tiny peep-hole so that Jinsu could check what was going on on the other side.  For the ones that were free, Minseok pulled the compartments up as Jinsu passed through.  The first few she came to were empty, but in the ninth, she found Sehun and Jongdae sitting on a still-struggling Japanese soldier, Jongdae with a kitchen knife at the man’s throat that he looked like he might use if he absolutely had to.  She relayed the situation to Minseok, who passed on the order to knock the soldier out and for Sehun to keep watch while she and Jongdae went to find the other ones.  They came across a number of injured and unconscious boys on the way, and Jongdae decided he was more useful getting as many of them as possible to the infirmary once the passage for that was opened up.

Minhwan and three friends had taken out two between them in adjacent compartments, thought Jinsu didn’t stop long to talk to him because he was glaring at her like everything was her fault, and nearly ten minutes later, she found Kyungsoo sitting beside a very dazed-looking soldier and posing for selfies.  He told Jinsu proudly that he’d taken him down all by himself by dropping on him from behind from the stairs, and his smug expression was so endearing that Jinsu had a hard time not laughing.

The fifth one took much longer to track down, mostly because he’d managed to escape somewhere into the bowels of the time machine and nobody had come across him.  After a lengthy search, during which time she could feel the Attayear’s engines revving around her, Jinsu was joined by Yixing and Jongdae, who was now equipped with his bow and arrow, and Yixing took them down to the engine and store rooms, as they’d been sectioned off and the only places that were as yet unsearched.  Other boys came down after them (Chanyeol hovered protectively at Jinsu’s elbow), and he was eventually cornered by Minhwan as he hid behind a stack of crates containing lithium and tellurium.  Jongdae trained his weapons on him, ready to fire if he tried any funny stuff, but Minhwan managed to wrestle the soldier into submission and then knocked him out with a meaty blow from his fist.  Jinsu reported back to Minseok, who requested the unconscious body to be brought up to the main level.

“Tell somebody to find a porthole not too high up,” he said, “and to chuck the soldiers out of it.  That way they’ll still be in their time period and we won’t be breaking any grandfather clauses or endangering ourselves by having them on board, but we want to get going as soon as possible.  The virus is stronger than I thought and I’ve only managed to deadlock parts of it, not counteract them, which will make life tricky.”

Minhwan and Jongdae between them hauled the soldier off and several others went back up to dispose of the other Japanese invaders.  Jinsu was given the all clear a few minutes later and turned to Yixing to tell him that it was time to put the engines on full throttle manually, since it couldn’t be done from the control room.

Yixing immediately began directing the boys down there with them to help lock the parts of the engine into place in the dominant engine room and brace them as best they could with the poles and slings that they had.  Chanyeol reluctantly left Jinsu’s side to go and help in the twin engine room that they were in, since Yixing needed to be over on the other side and was dragging Jinsy along with him..

“When Minseok said full throttle,” Yixing checked quickly with her, “did he mean full throttle or full throttle?”

“Everything’s on the emergency system right now.  He wants to get the injured boys in the sickbay treated back in the present.”

Yixing grimaced.  “The engine won’t cope with that for more than a few minutes – not in this condition.  We won’t max out before we need to leave the time stream, though, so we probably can make it.  And we also need time to drift or else we’re going to land in the middle of North Korea and I do not advise that.”

Clattering down the ladder, he called for the boys to tighten everything up as much as was humanly possible.

“How long will it take, then?” Jinsu asked, descending the ladder at a much safer pace.

“To get back to present time?  Ten minutes, assuming nothing g