A/N: And here's the next chapter! :D

The four unit members pushed themselves back to their feet, their eyes still not leaving the object below them.

“What do we do, Captain?” Onew tore his eyes from the wreckage and looked at his superior.

Captain Leeteuk did not answer right away. His unit members knew that he was analyzing the situation and weighing their options.

“Should we go and get a closer look?” Minho pressed when the captain still did not answer for a while. 

The flames rose even higher.

And that made Captain Leeteuk decide.

“No,” the captain said. “It is too dangerous. Who knows what that thing is? Besides, look at those flames! The thing might suddenly explode!”

Yesung, who had been silent and staring at the object all this time, suddenly took off running down the cliff.

“Yesung!” Captain Leeteuk shouted after his unit member. “YESUNG, GET BACK HERE!”

“Prince Yesung, wait!” Minho also yelled as he, the captain, and Onew all ran after Yesung.

Yesung did not know what made him run. He did not know why he felt drawn to the object. He did not know what was making him go against his captain.

But he still kept running, trying to reach the wreckage as fast as he could.

All he knew in that moment was that he had to get near it.

The wreckage looked more horrible up close. Yesung guessed that it was once a large, spacious space vehicle. Was. In the past. 

Now, it seemed nothing more like a crushed, crumpled up circular pulp. Glass fragments littered the ground. Walls of metal were torn, crushed, and bent in all directions. Worse, the flames around and in it were starting to be an inferno. Smoke rose in towering plumes from the object.

“Yesung!” the captain shouted angrily as Yesung’s unit members caught up with him. “I told you not to approach it!”

Yesung did not meet his captain’s glare and just kept his eyes on the blazing object.

“I hope you will later be able to explain your disrespectful behavior and disobedience to a direct order,” Captain Leeteuk snapped as he grabbed Yesung by the neckline of his tunic and tried to drag him back. “For now, we need to get away from here!”

For all the strong, muscular captain’s pulls, though, Yesung would not budge.

“Captain,” Minho hesitantly interrupted the captain’s one-way struggle with Yesung. “Captain, what if someone is in there?” he voiced out the silent question that was plaguing in all of their minds.

Captain Leeteuk pursed his lips. To be honest, he had been questioning the same thing in his mind as soon as he had gotten over the shock of the object crashing into their planet. However—

“We cannot risk it,” the captain said firmly. “Even if there is someone there, we do not know if it might be an enemy. More importantly, it is too dangerous to go into that wreckage.”

As if to prove his point, pieces of metal broke off from the vehicle, falling to the ground in deafening crashes.

Captain Leeteuk had valid concerns, Yesung knew that.

But he could not ignore that gut feeling in his stomach.

That gut feeling that had earlier driven him to dash from the cliff down to the wreckage. That gut feeling that now made him startle his unit members once more as he ran into the blazing wreckage.

“YESUNG, NO!” Captain Leeteuk yelled, trying to grab Yesung, but it was too late.

As Yesung got to the flames, he stopped, trying to spot some kind of opening into the vehicle that was not being blocked by fire.

Then, he spotted it. A few feet to his right, several feet above him, was an opening. There were no flames blocking, but there were flames right below it. Yesung could easily jump the distance, but the flames below made it risky.

But he could not ignore the pull that was making him go inside this wreckage.

He jumped.

His hand was able to grab on the metal, with his long body dangling, the flames reached his feet, and he hissed in pain, pulling his legs in an effort to avoid being thoroughly burned. He pulled himself up into the opening and jumped into the vehicle, wincing as his slightly burned feet hit the floor. 

Then, he pressed onward.

He pushed and pulled metal beams that were in his way. He avoided the flames and coughed his way through the ever-increasing smoke. He searched determinedly.

What exactly he was searching for in this wreckage, he was uncertain, but he kept searching.

Then, arriving at what seemed to be the vehicle’s cockpit, beneath what seemed to be a table of controls, lay a body.

Yesung quickly ran to it.

He had never seen a creature like this before. The creature’s form and limbs somewhat resembled those of his people, but the creature’s appearance was still so different. What was this creature?

Then, he noticed that the creature’s skin was mostly covered by some thick, oozing, red substance. Red substance that seemed to be coming the creature itself, through open wounds and cuts on its body. Horrified, Yesung realized that the red substance was probably the creature’s own blood and that it was therefore grievously injured.

He made to lift the creature, but paused. All his training made him aware that just moving an injured body could make the injuries worse. Even more so now since the creature was strange, and Yesung knew nothing about its physiology and anatomy. 

But the danger of the situation made itself known once more as a heavy, metal beam fell not far away from where Yesung and the creature were.

And Yesung decided that being in here was more dangerous to this creature’s life than making its injuries worse.

Yesung quickly but carefully lifted the creature into his arms. He felt a rush of warmth, which had nothing to do with the burning inferno around him, spread through his body. But he did not have the time to ponder on it. He had to get them out of there.

Getting out was trickier than Yesung’s venture into the vehicle, with more beams and parts of walls having fallen and the flames burning even higher and taller with the time that had elapsed. He persevered, though. He could not meet his death in here. He could not let this creature in his arms die in here. He had to get them out safely.

However, he soon found himself at a dead end. He turned around and go back the way that he had come from to find another way, but then, another burning beam fell, blocking his path. He and the creature were trapped in this room with no way out!

Yesung’s eyes frantically searched, but he could see no other way to escape. Was this the end, then? The end of his life? Was he (along with this creature) meant to die in here?

But then, the creature stirred in his arms, moving its head a bit and letting out a low moan of pain. Then, it fell still and unconscious once more.

Seeing the signs of life from the creature, no matter how minimal and brief these signs of life were, strengthened Yesung’s will.

This cannot be the end.

If there was no way out, he will make a way out.

He ran to a blank space of metal wall, laid the creature on the floor near him, and drew out his sword. Hoping that on the other side of this metal wall was the outside and not just another part of or room in the vehicle, he jabbed his sword into the metal wall. For all the strength that he put into the blow, he only managed to dent the wall. But Yesung did not stop and continued hacking at the wall. Then, his sword finally broke through the wall, and judging from the light that flooded through the hole that his sword made, they really could get out through this wall.

With renewed strength and fervor, Yesung kept on hacking the wall with his sword, trying to make the hole big enough for them to get out.

“Yesung?!” he heard Captain Leeteuk’s voice call from the other side through the hole that he made.

“Captain Leeteuk!” he shouted back, glad that his unit members had apparently heard the blows that he was doing again