Slightly disoriented, like the first time, Sunyoung was still in a better position when she came through the mirror. Standing this time, she came to a stumbling halt as the three men tumbled through behind her, and looked ahead at the single formless imago staring at them in what was probably wide eyed surprise. It looked like they had been on the way out with one of the summoned platforms being nearby, but they were frozen now, much like Sunyoung.

                Gripping the crystal hard in her hand, Sunyoung frowned and focused hard. She was just as surprised as anyone when the floor reluctantly pulled back, allowing them all to fall as if in slow motion. Her frown turned to surprise and a startled yelp escaped as her and her companions tumbled down, spinning head over heels in free fall. They passed through several layers of metal in a tunnel of sorts before being ejected into open air.

                “Yah!” her companions yelled in panic, flailing uselessly as they reached for each other and tried vainly to stop their flight.

                “Hold on!” Sunyoung yelled, focusing hard again. Now that they were free, she had to get them away… Her mind jumped from one flying thing to the next – dragon, no; phoenix, no; airplane, no… until she finally just envisioned an orb. With almost startling speed, a transparent globe popped into existence around them, but they were still falling. She could see the ground below, massive trees reaching up as if to catch them. “Not this time,” she exhaled, drawing strength from the men nearby, though they were still incoherent with fear and confusion. Exerting her will once more, the globe sprouted translucent wings and a seat rose up to cradle her. A steering wheel appeared, hovering in front of her, and she gripped it with both hands, taking care with the crystal in her palm.

                “What’s going on?!” Aron cried out as he finally regained enough sense to question what they were experiencing.

                “We’re trying to escape without getting caught!” Sunyoung shouted back at him, glancing over her shoulder to see if anyone was following. Dread shot through her when she noticed at least one hoverboard flyer in the vicinity. Where there was one, there would undoubtedly be others…

                “This is crazy!” Wonshik flailed, standing up and clinging to Sunyoung’s seat as she steered them low, just above the trees. The steering wheel functioned very much like an airplane stick but at least it worked.

                “I know!” she snapped back, glancing over her shoulder again and frowning when there was another hoverboard user in pursuit now. “See if you can get rid of our company,” she commanded, looking ahead to try and find a place to dip through the trees.

                “How!?” they all cried in unison, completely at a loss.

                “Use the crystals and your imagination!” she retorted, refraining from rolling her eyes. She knew she’d told them about it, but it was rather a lot to take in.

                “Like this?” Jackson wondered aloud.

                Sunyoung wasn’t sure what he was talking about until she felt the flying contraption actually shift, suddenly weighted down by something else. With a quick look to see, she blinked in surprise and answered, “Yeah?” He had summoned a… rail gun? “Don’t kill them!” she reminded him, biting her lip. “This isn’t a game, you know!”

                “Right,” he muttered, and it was hard to know what he was feeling then. But at least the rail gun shifted in a moment and when she checked again, it seemed to be some kind of net gun? “Take… this!” he growled, launching off a net.

                Their whole contraption shuddered at the release but Jackson’s weapon worked to scatter the two that were trailing them. Unfortunately, another had joined in the rear and they were probably going to be seeing more before too long. “We have to find a place to hide!” she grumbled, head swiveling as she returned her focus to the trees.

                “We’ve got an idea!” Aron and Wonshik stated together. She couldn’t spare much attention but a quick look showed that both had taken up the equivalent of anime power stances. Under any other circumstances, it would have been funny. Now… it seemed to fit. Especially when she felt the weight of magic pass over them like a tingling blanket. It was vaguely familiar…

                “Invisibility?” she wondered aloud, head turned to hear the response.

                “Yep,” Aron answered in a clipped tone, the sound indicative of his focus.

                “And… copies!” Wonshik added as replicas of them appeared around the ship.

                Sunyoung had to admit… she was a little impressed. Oh hell. She was very impressed. “Nice!” she whispered, biting her lip as she looked back to see what the hoverboard people were going to do. The diversion appeared to work as most of them forked off in different directions. There was one hoverboard person that stayed the course though. “Hmm…” she hummed in mild concern. They were obviously not fooled by their trick, though it was likely they couldn’t see them. Unless… Sunyoung looked down and noticed that their ship was displacing some of the leaves as they passed, leaving an obvious trail to follow. “Bugger it!” she grumbled, pulling on the stick to rise up and away from the trees. As she looked back again, she noticed the same hoverboarder had slowed and appeared to be looking around in mild confusion. “Gotcha,” she snorted in satisfaction.

                “Sunyoung!” she heard at the same time, just as she saw all three men fall to the back, plastered against the transparent surface of their flying device.

                “Sorry!” she cringed, leveling out almost immediately.

                Jackson, Wonshik, and Aron ended up in a haphazard dogpile of tangled limbs and confusion. “Get off me!” one of them yelped and another groaned in what sounded like pain. “Careful!” someone else yelped, and it took everything in her not to look back at the confused jumble of sounds. It was hard enough focusing on the copies zooming away and the hoverboard imagos trailing them as it was.

                “Okay!” Now that was definitely Wonshik. “This is crazy!” he exclaimed, practically appearing at Sunyoung’s shoulder like before.

                “Yah!” she yelped, yanking the flying device to the side and sending them careening to the left.

                “Sunyoung!” they wailed again as they collectively found themselves piled on the left side of the device this time.

                “Sorry,” Sunyoung responded, cringing at the accident. “You surprised me…”

                “Surprised you?” Jackson laughed once, extracting himself with a semblance of grace. “You who called us up and told us a crazy story about people on the other side of the mirror and then pulled us through a mirror and apparently used magic to get us out of there?”

                “I told you,” she shrugged, glancing at the trio uncertainly before she returned her attention to the path before her. “And you figured it out well enough,” she added, eyes narrowed while she continued to scan the trees. At the back of her mind, she had to wonder what the cost of the magics they’d expended were, but for now, she was using the majority of it. That was okay by her for the time being. She wanted their help but she didn’t want them to have to deal with any negative side effects if she could help it.

                “Okay. You did,” Aron conceded as he approached her left side in a calm manner. “But we’re still gonna need a bit more explanation now that we’re actually… here, you know?” he laughed once, gesturing towards the world at large that they had suddenly found themselves in.

                “I hear you,” she nodded in understanding, eyes lighting up as she finally spotted what appeared to be some kind of opening in the trees. It would at least allow them to get below the tree line and into better cover so she could explain things at catch their breath. “Hold on!” she warned, giving them a heads up this time before she banked right, aiming for the opening.

                They yelped, Aron clung to her chair, and Wonshik and Jackson tumbled to the right, hitting the transparent surface again. “Ow…” they groaned in tandem as Sunyoung dipped into the sparse opening, glancing around quickly to make sure they were still being followed. Through the canopy, they plummeted, hovering between massive trunks and filtered shadows. Sunyoung didn’t know where she was going, but she knew they needed to put space between them and their trackers. And find a place where they could disperse their magic without being tracked so easily. The last part she wasn’t sure about, but distance was her biggest concern. Then… Amber.

                Weaving in and out of the trees, she was grateful when the men fell silent, choosing to marvel at the wondrous things around them. She heard them gasp and murmur quietly to themselves. At one point, she noticed a pack of maps passing by them and they went crazy for a moment, staring at the strange hybrid creatures. But like before, there wasn’t much else to see. The forests remained strangely quiet in comparison to their own world. She did wonder if they might happen to see a forest crawler but figured that was not likely if they were nowhere near a Metropolis or a pathway between them or to a settlement near them.

                “Okay…” she hummed at last, slowing down and easing the flying device towards the ground. “We’re gonna land and go on foot for a bit, just to put some distance between us and this thing. I don’t know how well they can track new things but Amber and Ren mentioned they could track magic so… yeah. No magic while we’re walking, okay?” she asked, looking back as she set the flying contraption on the ground.

                “Sure,” they answered in almost unison, though Wonshik quickly hid his hand behind his back with a sheepish grin, the last vestiges of some kind of magic trick wearing off in its wake.

                Sunyoung stood up and looked at the flying device with a frown, realizing belatedly there was no door. With a sigh, she waved her hand and drew where one should be, summoning an exit with relative ease. She couldn’t help but glance at the crystal with some concern as she did so, noticing that it seemed to be larger than the last time she had looked at it. “Come on,” she urged, waving for them to follow as she pocketed the purplish crystal and hopped outside.

                “Coming!” Jackson grinned, following first. Then it was Aron and then Wonshik, but only because the other beat him to it.

                “So what is this place?” Aron asked as they started moving along, keeping close to the trees as they wound their way through the giant trunks.

                “I don’t really know. This is obviously a forest, but as far as the world goes…” Sunyoung answered with a shrug. “Amber and Ren only mentioned that it was a parallel dimension next to ours. They’re connected by the mirrors. Well, any truly reflective surface at any rate,” she amended, recalling the pond that had gotten her back here.

                “And we can use magic here?” Jackson asked, coming abreast of her and looking down at the crystal in his palm.

                “Apparently,” Sunyoung nodded. “Only some imagos can, but from what I can see… all humans can?” she answered uncertainly, shrugging on her response. “I only learned I could by accident,” she admitted with a laugh.

                “Oh?” Wonshik hummed, drawing close on the other side. “What happened?” he wondered, eyes twinkling in amusement.

                “I got stuck in a tree,” she answered in a deadpan tone, giving him a perturbed side eyed look.

                “One of these trees?” he asked in astonishment, pointing up to the canopy above.

                “Yep,” she nodded in response.

                “Damn!” he whistled in surprise.

                “How did you get out?” Aron asked at her back, having taken up a position directly behind her since she was now flanked by Jackson and Wonshik otherwise.

                “I fell in a map’s nest and-”

                “A what?” Wonshik asked first, brow furrowed.

                “A map… mammalian airborne primate,” she quoted from memory, albeit a bit slowly. “That’s what Ren and Amber called them anyway.”

                “Sounds wordy,” Aron snorted once.

                “That’s why they call them maps,” Sunyoung added with a smile.

                “So you landed in a map nest and then… what?” Jackson encouraged, trying to keep her on track.

                “Well, one of them apparently found the crystal I originally showed you guys. I landed on it and put it in a pocket. When I got stuck, I started fiddling with it, just to kill time but I was thinking about what I needed and… what do you know! A rope appeared out of the tree,” she explained with a helpless gesture. “So of course I kept it, but Ren didn’t know why I could use and then he sent me back to keep me safe because apparently it’s dangerous that we know how to use magic, but… Amber’s here,” she murmured quietly, coming to a standstill that almost had Aron running into her. Her face grew hot on the memory of that parting kiss and she frowned slightly. “She’s in trouble and I… we have to help her,” she explained with a quick breath.

                “What kind of trouble again?” Wonshik asked, toying with the crystal fragment between his fingers.

                “Deadly if they were telling me the truth,” she muttered, swallowing hard.

                “For real?!” he nearly choked, gripping the crystal in his fist.

                “Where is she?” Jackson asked, grabbing Sunyoung’s shoulder and pulling her around to better face him. “I mean, you told us, I know… but it didn’t feel real then. Now…” he trailed off, face pinched with concern.

                “I know,” she reassured him, placing a calming hand on his. “And I don’t know where she is exactly because I’m not sure how to navigate this place, but Ren said she was probably in Metropolis One,” she explained, her bottom lip.

                “Metropolis One… as in One, Two, Three, and so on?” Aron inquired, leaning close so she could see him in her periphery.

                “Exactly.”

                “Why One though?” he wondered aloud, chewing his bottom lip.

                “Oh! That was where the Royal was at, right?” Wonshik answered, raising his hand like an excited schoolboy.

                “Yep,” Sunyoung nodded in agreement. “The Royal she offended.”

                “Ugh…” they all groaned at once. It was a wonder they didn’t face palm together too. Sunyoung would’ve. It just felt appropriate.

                “Where’s Ren in all this?” Aron asked, glancing around as if by asking he could somehow summon the missing person.

                “I don’t know,” Sunyoung admitted hesitantly. “He said that Amber had friends on this side and that they’d be doing what they could to help her. But he wouldn’t let me stay so I don’t know where he went after he sent me back to our world,” she explained with a grumble, crossing her arms over her chest. She understood why he did it, but she was still annoyed.

                “Okay. So… any ideas about how to find either of them now?” Jackson asked, following Aron’s example. He seemed to feel that if he looked around enough, he could find something.

                “Magic?” Sunyoung offered with a hesitant shrug.

                “About that…” Wonshik hummed, leaning close so he could rest his arm on her shoulder and give her a sidelong look. “How exactly does magic work here? I mean, we see it in movies and shows all the time and we saw it here when we actually used It, but… what’s the deal?”

                “I wish I knew,” she responded with a sigh. “Ren and Amber said that imagos – people like them – can use it if they have Royal blood. But when they do, it usually has a high price. Like… costs them years or time. Something like that,” she tried to explain, biting her bottom lip as she did so.

                “Eh?” they reacted at once, surprised voices rising as they moved around her. “You mean that using magic will basically make us old?” “Or kill us?” Jackson and Wonshik nearly stumbled over each other in their haste to speak first.

                “I don’t know!” Sunyoung shrugged again. “I only just figured out I could use magic here. Doesn’t work on the other side,” she grumbled, still a little miffed about that.

                “So we don’t know what effects using magic will have on us here,” Aron clarified for everyone, taking his crystal out to stare at it intently.

                “No, we don’t,” she agreed, taking hers out too so she could see it herself. “Does anyone feel any different?” she asked, wondering in part because she didn’t but wasn’t sure if that extended to the other three as well.

                “I don’t feel different but I do think mine looks different. A little… bigger,” Wonshik hummed thoughtfully.

                “Yeah. Apparently, the more you put into them, the larger they get,” Sunyoung explained, tilting her head to the side as if that explained everything. “The Metropolises have huge crystals powering them. Something that previous Royals have helped to establish apparently,” she added, glancing around the trio to see how they were reacting.

                Aron looked thoughtful, Wonshik overwhelmed, and Jackson had more of a blank look, like he was processing everything. He was the one that spoke first in the end. “You’re sure that Amber is in life or death danger?”

                “I believe so,” Sunyoung responded. She couldn’t say yes, because she didn’t actually know for certain, but she felt as much. Ren’s fear, and Amber’s, had been too real.

                “Then magic it is,” he shrugged, nodding once as if to himself.

                “You sure?” she couldn’t help but ask first, glancing at Aron and then Wonshik as well. They looked a little surprised but not against the idea.

                “Yep,” he grinned, peering at the crystal between his fingers now. His gaze shifted to her and he continued, “You might be the one she’s closest to, but we’re still her friends. Even if she did keep this whole place a secret from us,” he snorted once. “How did you find out anyway?” he wondered, eyes narrowing when he looked up to focus on her.

                Sunyoung flinched in surprise and then flushed as she remembered the events leading up to her ending up in this world. “She kind of pulled me through a mirror when I was at work. Amber being Amber, she didn’t really have a plan, but was doing her best,” she explained, nodding along to the words.

                “Hah! Sounds like Amber,” Wonshik chuckled, tossing his crystal up once and then catching it deftly in his hand.

                “Sounds like we’re all on board then,” Aron grinned, stepping close to clap Sunyoung on her free shoulder.

                “You too?” she blinked in surprise.

                “Uh huh. You brought us here, so we’re all in it together,” he winked, looking at the others to confirm. They nodded in agreement and he focused his attention on Sunyoung once more. “So what’s the plan?”

                Excitement and panic filled her at the same time and Sunyoung found the three suddenly looking to her for guidance in this. She was not normally the planner or leader, but admittedly, she did have slightly more experience here. And she had just a bit more understanding of what was going on. Not that it amounted to much… but the one thing hadn’t changed. “We find Amber and we rescue her.”

                “What can we expect?” Jackson asked, glancing at his fist, the other holding onto the crystal fragment.

                “If my last encounter and Ren’s explanation are anything to go on… more hoverboard users and likely Royals who can also use magic. Not sure how that will effect our own magic to be honest,” she admitted uncertainly, her stomach clenching at the thought.

                “Any idea of how many?” Aron asked, his tongue his bottom lip thoughtfully.

                “Sorry. None,” Sunyoung cringed apologetically.

                “That’s okay. We’ll just take it one step at a time,” Jackson encouraged, patting Sunyoung on the back reassuringly. “You’ve used the most magic so far, so I think we should probably take it in turns, now that we’ve got an idea of what’s going on.”

                “Agreed,” Aron spoke with a quick nod. “Wonshik?”

                “Huh? Oh yeah. Sounds good,” he grinned, stuffing his crystal into his pocket so he wouldn’t keep getting distracted by it.

                “So you said they can track us when we use magic?” Jackson asked, glancing at the direction in which they’d left the flying device.

                “That’s what Ren said. And Amber. And she did use magic just before they really found us so… probably,” Sunyoung explained as best she could.

                “Guess we’ll just have to focus on moving quickly then,” Wonshik shrugged, looking around the group to confirm the agreed.

                “Exactly. If you guys don’t have a better idea, I’d like to go first,” Aron volunteered, a thoughtful gleam in his eyes.

                “Oh?” Jackson chuckled with a wry grin. “Fine by me. That’ll leave us for offense or defense when we get close anyway,” he added, stepping close to Wonshik so he could pull the other man under his arm in a friendly, cajoling gesture.

                “So if you’re tracking and transportation and you guys are offense and defense… what does that leave me?” Sunyoung laughed once, pointing between the men.

                “Why, search and rescue of course,” Aron winked, giving her a slight bow.

                “Oh,” she chirped, nodding to herself and feeling rather satisfied with that decision. “Okay then,” she murmured, taking a breath and putting her hand out like in a huddle. “You guys ready then?” she asked, looking at the trio around her as her heart started to race.

                “Of course!” they agreed in tandem, shuffling to reach their hands in as well.

                “Let’s do this?” Wonshik asked, his way of offering their cheer.

                The group looked at each other and shrugged before nodding in easy acceptance. “One… two… Let’s do this!” they crowded, raising their hands high and full of nervous energy. Looking around, Sunyoung couldn’t help but feel she had made the right choice in asking them to help her. She just hoped that none of them would have to pay a heavy price for it…

(a/n: Apologies for the delay again and for any typos or errors. This is very much a version I haven't looked over with a fine toothed comb, but it's whole and where I wanna go with it. So... thank you for being patient and I do hope you enjoy. Please bear with me as I get the next update out. Considering I have a deadline with this one, I should be getting another update out soon so keep your fingers crossed! lol Thank you and have a wonderful week!)