Cheaters never win. If there’s a nugget of wisdom I took from my aunt, it was this. Cheaters never win. Take her death for example.

A scientist hired by the Council to take charge of a ten-year-old, she didn’t achieve the glamour she expected from life. Technically unrelated to me. Typically a loner. Totally taken with scribbling onto a blank slate. Memories whitewashed, I soaked her in like a sponge.

“Love” isn’t a word to throw around loosely, but she said it everyday. Dolled up my daydreams with visions of a Rank 2 home, husband, children. As much as she adored me, she pinned after a make-believe family lineage as though she could hear her internal clock.

Tick. Tick. Ticking. 

“Cheaters never win,” she said the day she took a hammer to it. Attempted a coup. Played an illegal hand when pressured to fold. Killed in a hit-and-run on her way to the Hall of the Guardians. Perhaps Baekhyun played witness without a second thought.

“It’s fizzing.” Chanyeol’s voice reported across the channel, “Like,” buzz, “grilling,” buzz, “bacon.” Buzzing. Wherever he was, the surface was a long way up. Distant crashing before, “We won’t make it out, your highness.”

Silence gave me pause. Assorted last words rolled by. Spilling out in chalky, black chunks. “Love” feels too noble to adorn with faux diamonds. 

Cheaters never win; never say never.

“Go to B1.”

“Repeat after me: you’re a volcano.” You’re a volcano. “Wait. No. I’m a volcano.” You are?

Franky couldn’t keep his eyes straight. The left was always dead on. The right was always looking up. Strabismus: the mentor would explain cross-eyed to a tongue-tied child of the Sun. Chanyeol grew a strange fondness for the ambiguity in a look. A gesture. A phrase.

Yet, at some point, screaming “I’m a volcano” at the top of his lungs lost its endearment. Became a needy cry for attention. Dormant as he was, the claim was an empty threat. 

What kind? “A volcano.” What type? “A volcano’s a volcano.”

Definitions. Puberty stressed the importance. He depended on facts as though they gave outline to his being. Spent years believing tracing was akin to cheating — cheaters never win.

Skin popping, first degree burns sizzling white, an incapacitated Kris balances precariously upon Chanyeol’s back. Teetering with each ladder rung. Flames exposed skin showing under charred clothing. Minutes passed inside the Court’s belly before they escaped immediate danger, rising above the inferno.

Identity is discovered through a self-realized epiphany, “they” say. Yet “a volcano’s a volcano.” Vague. Hollow. Powerful. Leaving vast room to define the future.

Muscles stinging, ears ringing with a new concrete explosion, the Sun Guardian continued his climb. Protected by his natural affinity, this mild pain felt temporary. Secondary to the unrecognizable body hunched over his shoulders. 

Time writes denotations, forms connotations, creates meaning. Frame flexible, his existence on the verge, there’s room to change. To fill with a look. A gesture. A phrase.

Bones cracking, fire cackling as it nipped at his heels, Chanyeol steadied himself outside the metal doors labeled “B1.” The air was black. His lungs seized. He breathed fire. 

Combusting from the inside out — like a volcano.

Gangly. Contorted fingers laid askew. Mangled. Beneath flesh melted like wax, lips gasped. Formed incoherent gurgling. Kris had seen better days; now he couldn’t see at all.

“What’s your name, sir? Dr. Dike says diverting The Bloom Project’s serum should give his cells a much-needed energy boost. Come again? Emphasis on should. You’re making me lose confidence in you, Dr. Dike.”

Depth perception limited by medium, making out the conversation between Chanyeol and the lone scientist left with his creation was borderline impossible. Suddenly, their argument halted. Chanyeol turned towards the computer screen and shrugged, “It’s worth a shot.” Go for it, I replied.

Failed to mention the red patches dotting his shoulders and neck. Forgotten as I peeked around Luhan’s personal computer, attempting to reach past the projected images. Two-dimensional at every angle. Don’t ask, Kai said.

“Escape the Hall of the Guardians only to teleport into an exploding building?”

“You’ve suggested crazier schemes.”

“That I have.” I laugh. Hear Chanyeol laugh, too. More distant exchanges off-screen. “How’re you doing over there?”

0.21 seconds. A millisecond past could result in a second pinky. Mutated plant life already threatened its native habitat. A being is easier to break than a concrete jungle. 

“0.21 seconds.” 0.21 seconds, I repeat after Chanyeol. Who breathes deep. Gulps hard. Defines the present. “How fast can you count, your highness?

Tubing haphazardly injected into Kris’s bulging rib cage, there’s the vocal countdown. 3. 2. 1. It’s the flicking of a light to realize you can see just fine without. Quickly switched on. Off. 

Followed by eerie wailing. Strangled from grinding teeth. Wavering tremors that reached high and low. Then quiet. “Kris.” Someone called. “Kris?” A voice without a body.

“Five more minutes.”

Extra pinky, toe, heart or not, the brothers embraced. Relief washed over, knocking me into the chair I hadn’t realized I stood from. Wrapped me tight. Welled up as Kris hobbled forward with Chanyeol’s help. To see me. Face-to-face. 

Tiny gems passed between us. Looks, gestures, phrases I’ve forgotten. Ask was what Kai whispered, struck by epiphany. Ask was the syllable he gave life. 

0.21 seconds: a chance to see milliseconds past the end of this long year.

Rendezvousing on Main Street in Sector A proved disastrous for the celestial sons. The Council’s forces ambushed the Guardians at the moment of reunion. Fighting seemed counterproductive to their mutual survival. Set upon mutual destruction, men and women descended grassy slopes guns blazing. Running blind — quite literally. 

“All eyes on me, boys and girls.” Baekhyun transcended Lay’s hacking coughs and Tao’s howling cries. Bullets ripped by his face. Harmless. More soldiers piled in through crumbling alleyways. 

Aided by a worse-for-wear Xiumin, Sehun tackled the challenge of keeping reinforcements from advancing on the frontline. “You’re pretty awful.” A snide comment snuck in. Heard over whistling wisps, high clocking winds batting hard against the cryokinetic’s cheeks.

Calculating more than revenge, Luhan collapsed asphalt. Protected their six from an attempted flanking maneuver. “I’m handling it.” D.O stressed, being one-upped in his expertise motivation enough to leave the injured Lay and Tao in Chen’s capable hands. 

Feeling-less-than-capable — one hand on either unconscious Moon Guardian — Chen rushes Suho whose sweat could water entire, drought-stricken fields. “Needing an escape route right about now.” He receives a grunt that echoes in the manhole nearby. Unclogging a sewage system back-upped with plant roots is easier in theory; “if theories could save asses,” Sehun later says.

Rising, covered in grime and uncensored gunk, Suho’s victorious declaration is interrupted as an explosion rocks the world beneath their feet. Lay’s seizures come to a full stop. Tao’s translucent skin becomes tangible. Smoke rises in the direction of the Council’s Court. 

There’s an existential crisis. It’s been a long year so far. This morning I couldn’t move my pinky finger. Momentarily. Enough to break out in a cold sweat. Considering Kris probably has a new one to spare, it’s nothing to fret about. 

Cera says it’ll start in my hands. Legs, lungs, little inconveniences at first. The double digit days will incapacitate me. She suggests I reserve a set of emeralds to keep the time. “Spoil yourself.”

Sounds good, I reply.

There’s an existential crisis here; I’m not having it.

Ask. Kai hears the clock. Tick. Tick. Ticking. I say, “Chanyeol?” Rising from coal, a golden nugget catches my eye. Cheaters never win. “Light it up.”

A/N: You’re in a state of flux. Forever changing. There’s no set definition for who you are. Perhaps there never will be — and, no matter what “they” say, there’s nothing wrong with that. 5 chapters to go. (Follow me on tumblr for story news and hum-worthy tunes!)