“Xiumin, your concept will be frost. You can freeze things.”

Xiumin nodded with a smile at their director, excited at the prospect of his new ‘powers’. This man would be running the shoot of MAMA, the music video that would finally mean their official debut. All of the members huddled in a bouncy little circle of excitement around the director, eager for their concepts to be announced and for the filming to begin. Lay watched from the edge of the crowd with a small smile, waiting for his turn for his concept to be stated.

“And... Tao. Your concept is time. You can freeze or rewind time, I guess.”

Tao grinned smugly. Lay his lips nervously, wondering when his name was going to come up.

“Kris?”

“Yes sir.”

“You’ll be a dragon. You can fly.”

“I can fly?”

“You can fly.” The director said in a flat voice, clearly not as excited about this as Kris was.

Kris raised his hands above his head and laughed loudly. “Mine’s the best! Everyone else go home! I can fly! Yeah!”

Tao hit him to make him shut up, and the director cleared his throat impatiently.

“Ah... Chen. You have the power of lightning.”

“Awesome!” Chen leaned forward and examined the scorpion ring on the accessory table that had been rolled in, bobbing his head animatedly.

The director eyed him to make sure he didn’t touch anything, but shifted his gaze back to his clipboard after a moment. “Luhan, you’ll have telekinesis. Move stuff around with your mind.”

Luhan bit his lip and nodded, looking around quickly and fiddling with his fingers.

Lay squirmed because he was last, and he didn’t know what other powers existed in the world. Additionally, they’d already been told EXO-K’s concepts, and that narrowed his ideas even more. All the main elements were gone. Weather too. What could it be? He’d probably wind up being something lame.

“And... Lay. You’re a unicorn.”

Luhan snorted and bent over to stifle his laughing, but Lay remained impassive.

“... A unicorn?”

“A unicorn. You’ll have healing powers.”

“Unicorns have healing powers?”

“They are believed to in the West.”

Kris might have shaken his head to disagree, but he couldn’t move - otherwise he’d break out laughing. And he couldn’t afford that. No one wanted to make Lay angry. Luhan was the only one that actually started laughing, but everyone else (scratch the director) was showing signs of holding in laughter.

“So I’m a unicorn with healing powers.”

The director rolled his eyes. “Was that not clear? Yes. A unicorn with healing powers. Now, I need to get back to the set. You all are done for today. Be back on time tomorrow.” He left the room in a hurry, clinging his clipboard to his chest so papers wouldn’t fly off.

As soon as he was out of earshot, the members of EXO-M began talking about their concepts enthusiastically - what they hoped the music video would have, how they’d showcase their powers, and of course, which was the coolest. Lay stayed quiet, but Kris wouldn’t shut up with his boasting about how he was a dragon and how he could fly. Every once and awhile someone would laugh about how “At least they weren’t a unicorn”, and one too many of those comments resulted in Lay storming out and starting his walk home.

He locked himself in his room before anyone else came home, and everyone but Kris felt bad for laughing at him. Being a unicorn wasn’t that bad. Unicorns were... Cute. And if he could heal, that was better than being a normal unicorn. No, unicorns definitely weren’t that bad. Everyone just didn’t seem to deny that their own power was cooler.

Tao tried to knock on Lay’s door to coax him out for dinner, but he was met with a stretch of silence before a shout to go away. No one could figure out what Lay was doing. Pouting or sulking, most likely, but it was weird.

When Luhan knocked on the door because he wanted to go to bed, Lay opened the door only a crack and shoved a pillow and a blanket into his arms, muttering something about sleeping on the couch.

The next day was an early morning, a hard day of work in order to shoot for the music video. Everyone was kept on their toes and had to be ready to be in front of the camera in an instant, hardly given breaks to eat or stand idly to chat.

When it was finally time to go to dinner and home, Lay requested to go shopping. Even Tao was too exhausted to accompany him, so the quiet idol was driven to a nearby mall on his own. He was glad for this.

What he had bought was a mystery. He had a few bags when he arrived home, but when he entered the dorm, he wouldn’t let anyone else near them. Lay dropped these in a corner in his closet, slapping Luhan’s hands away from the door when he tried to peek inside. He then went straight to bed, content with his work and accomplishments for the day.

The next afternoon, Lay shot his scene next to the unicorn portrait. The members who had already shot their special-power scenes were nervous that he might make a scene, and they steered away from that part of the set so he wouldn’t see them watching his reaction to the painting. But he acted completely differently to what they were expecting.

Lay couldn’t take his eyes off of it.

He could hardly even stop praising the portrait - how it was such a pretty unicorn and was that him and that it obviously was exactly what he’d look like as a unicorn and could he take it home and gosh it was cool.

Kris came over to oversee his shoot and kept mumbling I can fly, maybe trying to remind Lay that dragons were cooler than unicorns, but Lay would hear none of it - he kept going on about his healing powers and how he could save all the members of EXO with his healing powers while the coordi-noonas were fixing his hair and makeup, and they nodded absentmindedly, silently hoping he’d shut up.

Later Lay laughed at Xiumin for only being able to freeze things, pulling a Kris and bragging about how being a unicorn was the coolest thing ever and how it beat everyone else’s powers by a mile.

His apparent change in heart was a definite surprise, but it was welcomed. Maybe he was being a bit obnoxious, but he wasn’t being nearly as arrogant as Kris, so everyone was just happy that he was happy.

And when everyone got home, Lay unpacked his shopping bags and began decorating his room.

He’d bought maybe five stuffed unicorn plushies - the majority of them pink and girly. He didn’t seem to mind, and he put them on his shelves, on his bed, and on his nightstand, despite their color and theme.

Next he had somehow managed to find unicorn wrapping paper, which he was starting to cut and apply to sections of his wall like wallpaper. Luhan watched from his bed fearfully, making his partition of his side of the room very distinct. He didn’t mind the unicorns on Lay’s side; he rather liked them, actually. But if they covered the entire room, he thought it just might be too much.

Lay was fine with Luhan putting his foot down.

For now.

As the shoot went on, less members were needed all day, so everyone took breaks, and it became a fun game to go out and shop for Lay, trying to find the cutest little unicorn trinkets possible. Chen’s favorite was the unicorn-themed DVD he’d purchased, which had been playing constantly in the shared living room for two full days.

Within a matter of days Lay’s side of the room was starting to get full of cheap unicorn souvenirs, but he just wasn’t satisfied. Unicorns were awesome. He didn’t want to stop until his entire room was nothing but a shrine to the majestic creatures.

But Luhan was still able to assert his rule, maybe letting a few stuffed animals fall over his side of the bed, but unwilling to put up any of the posters Xiumin had bought on his section of wall.

The only other member who seemed to still enjoy their own concept was Kris, who still wouldn’t shut up about his ability to fly.

One day, Kris was particularly moody, and he came into the kitchen while Lay was drawing happily in a cute little unicorn coloring book Tao had bought him along with a beautiful 64-pack of crayons.

“Hey Kris, you know what unicorns can do?” Lay asked while Kris’ head was buried in the freezer.

“What?” The taller man asked impatiently, slamming the door shut.

“EVERYTHING.”

“Oh, shut up, Lay.” Kris rolled his eyes and leaned on the kitchen counter. “Can they fly?”

“If they have wings... See, this one has wings, she’s an alicorn -”  Lay held up the picture of Princess Celestia he was shading in. “She can use magic like a unicorn and fly like a pegasus -”

“I can fly.”

“Yeah, Kris, I know.”

“I’m a dragon.”

“I’m a unicorn.”

“ DRAGON. FLY.”

“Shut up, Kris.”

As EXO-M’s leader left the room with a shrug, Lay put the finishing touches on Princess Celestia and tore the page off to tack on his wall.

Now the shooting portion of creating the MAMA music video was completed, and all there was left for the producers to do was edit it. Though EXO-M still had hours and hours of dance and singing practices a day to prepare for their upcoming stages, Lay took the extra free time to strengthen his unicorn obsession, just barely able to steal the computer from Chanyeol to research them. He’d made makeshift horns out of rolled-up printer paper and tape, prancing around the house and handing out band-aids. But this didn’t seem to satisfy him. He wanted the full unicorn experience.

One day Lay left dance practice unexpectedly early, and he was only excused by the instructor because he was already ahead on the choreography. The leftover members scratched their heads for a moment, confused and wondering where he could have gone. But when they arrived home as well, it all made sense.

Lay had gone to visit the 2PM sunbaes to borrow the infamous horse mask they’d used in one of their videos. Now he was perched in front of the TV with three of his coloring books, watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and cheering for Twilight Sparkle.

As soon as the door opened and Kris stepped in, Lay skipped and pranced back to his room and slammed the door, hiding. He didn’t come back out until he’d removed the horse mask and the paper horn he’d taped to it, pretending nothing had happened.

If Lay’s antics weren’t so funny, maybe Kris would have arranged an intervention. But everyone still liked observing unicorn Lay in his natural habitat.

When the editing of MAMA was finally done, the group was one of the first to see it before it went public - after all of the producers and the CEO, of course. Everyone was blown away by the quality of the video and were animatedly cheering for themselves and pointing out certain points of the video that they remembered recording, ecstatic about bringing their work to the fans.

But at one part, Lay punched Xiumin in the shoulder.

“What? What! Why’d you do that! You totally just froze my unicorn painting! What! Why’d that happen? Is it okay? Hey! Xiuimin! That’s so mean! Is it okay?”

Other than that, the new video was a success.

Lay just refused to let Xiumin in his room from that point forward.

A/N: We hope you're enjoying these so far! We're really excited for the rest of the list of our ideas! ^-^