Wow, sorry for the sudden break in updates. I was held up because of the holidays on top of being swamped and frustrated with revising this chapter and the next one. It was really difficult. Anyway, please don't kill me for...well, you know, this chapter.

Reminder: No stealing or copying or translating or plagiarizing my fic! I will make your life miserable if you do...

Repost: 1/10/16

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Something To Stay Behind For

No one knew what to do or how to respond, therefore, placating each other was not an option, for it was a hopeless notion to attempt.

Unable to handle the madness anymore, Yixing fled the house and made a beeline for the bakery. He needed to get his mother, the only source of comfort and rationality available if you were not there.

He plowed haphazardly into the building, sprinting past lingering customers and the front counter—ignoring the baffled stares he got—so that he could barge rowdily into the kitchen. There, he found his mother talking to a few of the employees by the decorating station. His feet immediately carried him over to her.

“Mama, come with me,” he told her urgently, quaver-inducing fear underlining his voice.

Eunsun frowned at his ashen complexion combined with the scared light in his almond eyes. Concern and confusion filled her. “What is it, sweetie? What’s wrong?”

“Just come home. We need you,” he pleaded. Any minute longer, he would’ve pathetically broken down into a sobbing fit. When he tugged on her arm, Eunsun allowed herself to be dragged away, hastily excusing herself from the startled employees over her shoulder. Yixing was practically hauling his mother back to the house, too spooked and emotionally afflicted to remember his manners.

“Yixing-ah?” Eunsun cried out. “Tell me what’s going on—”

Upon stepping foot inside the house, Eunsun’s words died in , taken aback to see how devastated and crazed her scattered sons were. Luhan was kneeling on the floor and clutching at his head painfully, his eyes tightly squeezed shut. Sehun and Yifan were bent over him, trying to console him, but their words were meaningless, never reaching Luhan’s ears through the wildly pounding pain that drowned out everything else. Similarly, Suho was trying to comfort Kai, whose tan skin had taken on a paler shade as he shakily gripped the arm of the couch for support, looking ready to pass out any moment. On the other side of the couch, Tao was hunched over, a greenish-gray tint to his cheeks as if he was nauseous. Sitting still on the floor was Xiumin, looking lost and drained. Chanyeol and Kyungsoo’s eyes were tremendously wide with befuddlement and terror, their pupils dilated. There wasn’t a single victim here who didn’t share the freaked out feeling.

“Boys?” she implored timidly and carefully as if she was venturing out on thin ice. “What’s wrong?”

Unmindful of his queasiness, Tao threw himself off the couch and dove straight for her. As if he was a small child again, she took him in her arms and rubbed his back soothingly. “Mama! You should’ve been here!” he blurted out hysterically. “We all heard a voice in our heads! Then we became all sick and weird! And things flew across the room like there was a ghost!” He sniffled loudly, tears blurring his vision. “And Luhan-ge is going insane!”

Baekhyun seemed edgy as he grimly stated, “Just when Yixing-hyung left, a gust slammed the door shut and the lights flickered on and off uncontrollably by themselves.”

The news altered Eunsun’s perplexed expression to one of disbelief. “That sounds like—”

She was interrupted when Luhan roughly vaulted upright and onto his feet, his doe eyes wild but sharp with determination. “Dammit,” he growled. “I’m not staying here without Aris. Get out of my way.”

“Luhan!” Yifan snapped, his reprimand coming out as a stern bark. He prevented the other from storming off by blocking his way, standing before him imposingly. “What is wrong with you?” he demanded.

“The fact that we’re just loitering around here like fools while Aris is in trouble!” Luhan screamed back at him, his cheeks flushed an angry red. His knuckles turned white as he tightly squeezed his hands into trembling fists, his blunt nails biting into the skin of his palms.

Everyone paled considerably at his ferocious outburst. It wasn’t his intense attitude that bothered them—it was his claim.

“Aris-noona is in trouble?” Sehun repeated, horrified. “How do you know?”

Luhan winced. “I just do,” he insisted. “I can sense it. Can’t you?”

The boys exchanged wary, speculative glances. Yes, they did feel that something was certainly off...

Becoming serious, Eunsun took the reins of the situation by commanding all of them in a firm voice. “All of you, calm down or else your powers will disperse. Yifan-ah, Joonmyun-ah, grab the car keys. We need to head out and find Aris-ah now.”

“P-powers?” Chanyeol echoed blankly.

She nodded solemnly as she beckoned at all of them to hustle out the door. “Yes, you all possess powers, but they’ve been dormant for a long time. But never mind that. What’s important right now is finding Aris-ah.”

At their mother’s behest, Yifan and Suho hopped into the driver’s seats of the two SUVs while everyone else shuffled themselves in hastily, not bothering to buckle in their seatbelts. Eunsun was in the passenger’s seat of EXO-M’s SUV. With twin rumbles, the vehicles pulled out of the driveway and sped down the road.

“Mama, why do I feel like I’m lost?” Yifan asked her in a hoarse whisper, his sharp eyes warily fixated on the road ahead.

Eunsun shot him an apologetic look that might as well been full of pity.

“Because without her, you are lost.”

...

Ultimately, your downfall was because of your burdensome body.

Although you felt unfailingly numb with your mind impeccably keen throughout the battle, you were disappointingly aware that it was substantially your body that was dragging you down, ruining the full performance that you could’ve otherwise portrayed when engaged in a one-on-one war. If your eardrums weren’t ringing from being assaulted by thunderous blasts, you would’ve heard your loud, labored breathing. You idly recognized that the raucously pounding movement inside your chest was your erratically beating heart.

After successfully driving the Techa to the deserted side of town where hardly anyone was around, you had employed an invisible barrier to ward off humans who may accidentally stumble into the battle site.

But, as your body’s strength decreased, so did the stability of your magic. Thus, anything tied to your magic that you had ever secured—spells, seals, barriers—would be affected, fluctuating with disturbance but staying mostly intact.

How long have you been fighting? An hour? Two?

It hadn’t helped that the Techa had decided to shed its disguise in favor of retaliating, producing a bigger challenge for you.

It had discarded its trench coat and hat long ago, revealing a massive and reinforced body—muscular arms and legs, broad shoulders, a thick neck, and a squarely chiseled face. It appeared to have human skin, but you guessed it was actually using an illusion of projected images to feign so. This Techa was the first you’ve ever seen to resemble a human, but surely the inside of it was all machine mixed with organic components.

Behind those sunglasses that it never took off, you knew its eyes were scanners, which gleamed a wicked red color. Every time those bloody red lights flashed, shudders would internally rack your nerves.

It had set its sights on you, meaning that it knew who you were.

Its current mission was to kill you.

The Techa’s left hand was like a rocket, its wrist separating from its forearm to blast forward like a missile, fast and powerful enough to create a crater in a building. The fist could be retrieved and launched again. The right hand was fashioned to switch between multiple weapons—swords, a drill, a saw, a taser gun, a machine gun. Under those combat boots it wore were actually boosters. It could charge forward like a bull, ready to kill at a moment’s notice.

“Ha!” Sparking blue-white plasma-bolts ignited on your palms, and you them out with all of your might, the twin bolts spinning crazily as they flew. There was an annoyingly sturdy shield that the Techa had encased over its fake skin, so you’ve been spending your time and effort trying to deteriorate it in order to afflict highly severe damage. Using plasma-bolts to disrupt and effectively scramble the shield was your best plan. Hence, why you kept dispatching a barrage of plasma-bolts to overwhelm it. When the shield finally shut down, you quickly seized your chance, gathering a large electron-orb into your hands and flinging it forward.

SCRCRAZRACRZRC! The sound of highly condensed electricity violently abusing metal was harsh and deafening, like a chorus of a thousand cracking whips. Afterward, when the noises and light from your attack died down, the alien appeared disoriented, its hulking body riddled with unhealthy twitches. Distressed beeps escaped it.

But because it no longer had to concentrate its energy into maintaining a shield, its power and stability improved.

Voroom! By a hairsbreadth, you managed to narrowly dodge the missile fist before it hammered you into a pancake. The Techa held out its shortened appendage, and the fist accordingly returned to reattach itself on the bereft wrist.

“Dangit, it got faster,” you hissed, displeased by the fact that you had almost gotten killed. Why? Why did your unfit condition fail you now of all times?

Your internal tirade was cut short when you had to scramble out of the way before the taser gun found impact.

...

“What the—?” Xiumin was rendered speechless, completely astounded at what he saw outside the car window.

Buildings were smashed in, the road was cracked and scorched, and broken glass littered the ground. Dozens of people were running away or screaming for the police. To be honest, it wasn’t a horrendous scene, like one would expect if there was an apocalypse, but it was still startling, like a terrorist attack had taken place. Thankfully, no bodies—dead or partially alive—were strewn on the ground or other surfaces.

Did Aris-ah do all this? Eunsun thought with incredulity. No, no, it can’t be. She wouldn’t misuse her magic like that and risk exposure. She would only fight if she had to defe—

Comprehension dawned on her, and she paled as twice as much than before.

“Hurry!” she urged desperately, slapping the dashboard of the vehicle. “Aris-ah is in danger! She’s fighting something—something bad!”

Obeying her wishes, Yifan drove faster on the bumpy, destroyed road, Suho following suit in the other SUV from behind.

“How do you know, Mama?” Yixing demanded, apprehensively leaning forward in his seat.

“Aris-ah would never expose her magic to this degree unless she was defending herself,” reasoned Eunsun, lips stretched out and flattened into an uneasy line.

“Magic?” The word fell unfamiliarly on Yixing’s tongue. It was only an intrigued puff of breath. “Aris has magic?”

“She has magic; you boys have powers,” Eunsun confirmed briskly.

The SUV rocked from side to side on the decimated surface of the road. Giving up, Yifan stopped the SUV and shut it off; Suho copied him.

“We have to get out and search for her on foot,” Yifan intoned stoically. “It’ll be faster that way.”

Tao gasped incredulously, gripping the headrest of the other’s seat. “You mean into the danger zone?”

Chen shook Tao’s shoulder. “Never mind that! Let’s just go!”

They all hustled out of the SUV and regrouped with EXO-K, who were already surveying the area.

“Follow your hearts,” Eunsun could only provide to them as sensible advice as they fidgeted and mumbled anxiously, clueless on where to start searching for you. “If you know who your heart belongs to, your heart will know where to go.”

Well, that’s vague, Kai bitterly thought as he stressfully glanced around. The streets were mainly damaged here, as were the nearby buildings, but there was no distinct trail that led to your whereabouts. He lifted his gaze higher. The sky...

He spotted plumes of smoke and then a shimmer of a...barrier?

Kai pointed eastward in the direction of the semi-translucent barrier. “There!” he shouted before breaking into a heedless run, not waiting for his brothers. He was fast and nimble as any track runner, zipping past lingering pedestrians and maneuvering around different obstacles, of abandoned vehicles, damaged property, and necessary turns. As he mindlessly did that, he failed to notice how his body was leaking purple-black tendrils that resembled wisps of smoke.

All he had was one desire.

To find you.

He teleported.

...

A low, guttural groan slipped past your chapped, parted lips as you limply laid there in an uncomfortable position on the filthy ground, rubble digging into your back. Moments before, the Techa had managed to catch you off guard and had slammed you brutally into a building. As of now, its advancement toward you was languid and measured, not hasty to finish you off just yet.

You were...exhausted.

No, the word for it was discouraged.

You were sore and depleted down to your very bones, lingering on the border of fatigue or possibly death. Your expiring body had reached its limit. Everything around you was slowing down, yet every detail was clear to you—the approaching monster, the falling rain of debris, the sirens blaring in the distance.

And the familiar flurry of purple-black smoke. Smoke you swore once upon a time that you’d never see again.

Jongin.

His entire body materialized out of thin air in front of you, but all it took was a single glimpse of his handsome, breathtaking face for you to reject Death’s embrace by slapping its bony hand away. Yes, you dared to remain on Earth alive for however long you could.

“JONGIN!” you screamed and sprang forward into action. He was foolishly standing between you and the organic machine, shock nailing his feet in place. Lunging for him, you directed one of your hands to grab his shirtfront while the other flew past his shoulder, palm out towards the alien that had zeroed its masked gaze on the teleporting prince.

Behind its blocky sunglasses, the sinister red glare became brighter, more pronounced. This time, instead of shuddering out of repulsed aversion, you bristled defensively.

One out of twelve targets had been identified and located.

From your stretched out hand, a pulse of your magic shot forth like a torpedo and blasted the enemy alien back, but it withstood the force by digging in its heels. Not pausing, you yanked Kai away from the scene, fleeing as fast as you could.

“Jongin, what are you doing here?!” you screeched at him hysterically as the two of you ran for your lives.

Stunned beyond belief, Kai could only brokenly reply in a baffled stammer, “I-I-I don’t know. I was—I was running and—and thinking about you. N-next thing I knew, I-I was standing r-right in front of you.”

“You teleported,” you said, voice cracking at the onslaught of emotions that wracked your chest, but you withheld the tears and sobs that your hurricane of feelings were trying to invoke. “Your power has awakened.”

“You...you used magic,” he uttered, gawking at you.

The conversation was brought to a halt when something rampaged on your right, sounding suspiciously like the rapid discharge of a machine gun. A shower of high-speed bullets sailed by and destroyed a car, causing it to explode. You and Kai jumped out of the way, landing hard on the gritty ground.

“Aris!” Kai shouted.

“I’m fine!” you hollered back, pushing up to your feet as Kai did. In the distance from whence you came, you observed a large charging figure propelling itself towards your way.

It wanted to kill Kai.

Never.

Fueled with newfound energy and purpose, you briskly swept out your arm, the ground rumbling and rising at your persuasion. It elevated and then rolled forward like a tsunami, augmenting in size and swallowing up everything in its path.

BOOM! The Techa and the tsunami of earth met halfway and collided destructively. If looking from above, one would see that the nearby area had been stripped clean of its surface, the sheet of it having been peeled and coiled into a massive, rugged ball that now dominated the middle of the street.

“Let’s go,” you told Kai, your chocolate eyes brilliant and animated. To him, seeing you like this...you were majestic.

He could’ve mistaken you for someone else if it hadn’t been for the special way you looked at him, with so much love and devotion.

You and Kai resumed your getaway until you abruptly spotted familiar figures rushing your way on the opposite end of the street. Arms frantically waved about, and your name was being shouted.

“Aris-noona!”

“Aris-ah!”

“Aris!”

“YOU SHOULD’VE WAITED FOR US, KIM JONGIN!”

Kai cringed at the combined anger of Chanyeol, Sehun, and Baekhyun. The mentioned three did not hesitant to unleash their wrath on him, attempting to strangle or hit him. Everyone else moved to crush you in deathly hugs.

Meanwhile, you completely and overwhelmingly shocked that they were all here. Even Eunsun was present, which was bad because she was a defenseless human. You raised your voice, bubbling with chilly apprehension as you yelled, “What are you doing?! Get out of here! The Techa—”

The sound of crashing rubble stole your attention, making you snap your head in that clamorous direction. The Techa had drilled and rammed through the fortified cylinder of earth that had encased it. Firing up its boosters at full power, it accelerated towards you and the others. Kyungsoo and Tao let out horrified gasps upon laying their eyes on the nightmarish monster.

Shoving out your hands and even putting the weight of your shoulders into it, you unleashed a barrier that surged forth and then clashed with the Techa. Neither magical shield nor robotic alien gave in, pushing back and forth to force the other to submit. You gritted your teeth, not daring to relent.

“Run. Now,” you hissed through clenched teeth, new beads of sweat breaking out at your hairline.

“We want to help,” Luhan insisted bravely, but rather foolishly in your opinion.

“That monster you see before you has a mission,” you barked at him over your shoulder. “And that mission is to kill the twelve of you. That’s why it’s here on Earth. Now that it has seen you, it won’t stop. So, GO!”

“Let us help!” Xiumin demanded obstinately.

“You aren’t even in full control of your powers!” you argued, then winced when your barrier buckled, straining to remain erect. “You’ll just get hurt! Eunsun! Get them out of here!”

“Boys,” Eunsun warned in a thin voice, trying her best to not show how afraid she was at their current predicament; it was far too dangerous to be out in the open. “Let’s hide over there.”

The twelve of them hesitated.

Just then, your shield cracked and shattered apart, the Techa rocketing through unyieldingly. Instinctively, everyone fled, but all in different directions. However, their actions proved pointless as you threw up your hands, the ground erupting to form into a massive serpent, which intersected the Techa’s trajectory and snatched it into its jagged jaws.

“Whoa,” the boys uttered in awe at the impressive demonstration of your magic.

With brute strength empowered by its systems and gears, the Techa punched and smashed at the earth serpent that held it captive. First, it loosened the hold on it by destroying the serpent’s maw, and then, with a single punch from its missile fist, it demolished the head. The robot sprang free, to which it accordingly angled itself towards its targets once again.

Chanyeol was dumbly glued where he stood, eyes tragically wide as a killing machine barreled straight down at him.

“Chanyeol!” Suho gasped.

“CHANYEOL!” you screamed, heart seizing.

He frightfully closed his eyes and ducked his head, but as he did that, a scorching current coursed through his veins.

He felt...hot.

Really, really hot.

The fire prince choked out a startled gasp when there was an explosive glare of bright, warm colors accompanied by the blistering heat of flames. A protective wall of roaring fire had appeared before him to assault the Techa. The searing flames were unforgiving, with the intention to char the alien into there was nothing left but a pile of ashes, but the Techa jerked back, away from the fire prince, and came out harmed with nasty burns. Sections of its outer metal were melted off, and the interior of one arm was visible, wires and gears exposed.

“That. Was. Freakin’. Amazing.” Sehun gaped.

Relieved that Chanyeol was unharmed, Suho and Eunsun ran up to the dazed male and steered him away to a safer distance.

Taking advantage of the machine’s weakened state, you summoned a beacon of blue-white fire and shot it forward so that it pierced through an unguarded chest. The Techa stumbled back, but managed to regain its balance, and, at the same time, raised its artillery-equipped arm to retaliate with a hail of bullets. In response, you released countless bolts of fire, raining them down onto the enemy like an unforgiving meteor shower, wiping out the opposing bullets effortlessly.

When your firestorm abated, what was revealed next was a disturbing, cringe-worthy picture—a hideously damaged machine with an unrecognizable face that was melted and battered, along with a burned off arm and a cratered torso. Jammed gears were smoking, black muck was spilling from gaping wounds, and all kinds of static sparked here and there from underneath the layer that had once been metal skin.

“Time to finish this,” you huffed darkly, your eyes glowing a luminous light as your hands emanated with swirling magic. Making circulating gestures, you created a giant electron-orb that crackled and pulsated with intensity. With a shout, you hurled it at the monster point-blank.

Watching an ugly organic machine spasm ridiculously when being savagely electrocuted was stomach-wrenching. Finally, letting out one last broken beep, the Techa fell listlessly to the ground with a satisfying, resounding thunk.

It didn’t move again, and the red light behind its disintegrated sunglasses died.

You...did it.

You wheezed uncontrollably, hard and loud. You clawed at your dry throat and rasped out, “It’s dead. It’s dead.”

“Noona!” Sehun hurried over to hug you tightly. More arms encircled your exhausted form afterwards, belonging to Eunsun, Suho, Baekhyun, Chanyeol, and Kyungsoo. You leaned into their warm, soft bodies, feeling more relieved than you ever did in your entire life.

Your princes were safe. No danger would hurt them now.

“Jiejie, you’re injured!” Yixing exclaimed, aghast as he noted how badly bruised and bloody you were underneath your torn, dirtied clothes.

You attempted to smile, but it was too bleak and faint. “I hardly noticed,” you joked, unable to help yourself, years of practice making it an automatic response for you to ease up the tension that saturated the air. The numbness that had thrummed throughout your body now ebbed away to be replaced by searing pain and throbbing aches. You winced. “Ow.”

Tao was crying uncontrollably, disjointed hiccups breaking his blubbering for every intake of breath. Chen wordlessly comforted the younger boy by rubbing his quavering shoulders. “I-I th-thought y-y-you were going to die!” Tao sobbed, rubbing furiously at his puffy panda eyes that were welled up with fat tears.

“No,” you replied softly and glanced up at Kai who smiled very faintly, knowing what was crossing your mind when you said, “I realized I had something to stay behind for.”

Away from everyone else, Luhan and Yifan had wandered over to peer at the fallen mess that was the alien. Luhan’s recently revived intuition was nagging at him, urgently telling him that something was amiss. Cautiously, the doe-eyed male edged closer—the astringent smell of heavy smoke and burned metal assailing his nostrils—and zeroed his speculative gaze to the cavity that embedded the Techa’s huge, ruined chest.

“Luhan?” Yifan whispered apprehensively, unsettled by the way his older brother was acting. “What is it?”

Not hearing the other’s tense query, Luhan narrowed his eyes as he finally registered something. For once his power listened to him, obediently pulling apart the obstructive metal, wires, and gears around the chest of machine to reveal the heart-dropping sight of an active timer that was currently counting down from a minute. This timer unquestionably belonged to the self-destruct system, having commenced when the machine had failed to do its job, therefore, resorting to its disposal.

A bomb.

Luhan and Yifan in sharp breaths. Forty seconds.

Wondering why they were observing the wreckage, you had limped over to the two, but then suddenly tensed all over when Luhan and Yifan broke into a desperate, hasty run—away from the dead threat.

Too bad it was still a threat even when dead.

“Get back!” Yifan screamed. “It’s about to self-destruct!”

Thirty seconds.

“WHAT?!” everyone shrieked before sprinting for their lives in the opposite direction of the bomb as Luhan and Yifan were.

Everyone except for you. Subjected to compulsion once again, you had mindlessly raced for the princes nearest the closely impending danger. In your rigorously pumping heart, you knew that the boys were too late and too slow to make it to safety, which, in turn, triggered a dreadful sense of churning desperation and curdling terror inside you. The dread called forth and extracted the last reserve of your energy, roaring at you to run, to protect, to save. It was your sworn duty.

Twenty seconds.

Luhan and Yifan stared at you incredulously, beyond terrified, thinking that you were out of your mind. They frantically grasped at your arms to pull you away from the bomb, but you had shoved past them, conjuring up all of your remaining magic—every speck of it from all available storage recesses, including the one nestled deeply in your soul—to form a shield.

Ten seconds.

Your shield glimmered into existence.

And then the deafening explosion of a bomb happened, swallowing up everything in light, smoke, and vibrations. Its thunderous detonation had drowned out the cry of your name from twelve beloved voices.

“ARIS!”

Tell me I’m dreaming, because it can’t be reality without you.

...