Happy Birthday to you~  Happy Birthday to you~  Happy Birthday dear dinoooooo~  Happy Birthday to you x)  Happy Birthday Kim Jonghyun!  Wow, 24 now, huh?  Time sure does fly. . .  I hope you have (had) an amazingly incredible day with your fellow SHINee members and hopefully they give you lots of cake and good wishes! ^_^  Jonghyun, your hard-working attitude has been an inspiration to many, many, people.  I know you're branching out now, what with having your own radio show and being part of S.M. the Ballad and stepping up in the movement for gay rights, but to me, you'll always been the crazy, spazzy, puppysaur and the power vocals behind my favorite band of all time :)  Thank you for being an amazing human being and a contribution to S.M. Spies~

The room was silent.  Everyone knew what this meant.

No South Korean spies had ever gone to North Korean and returned.

Anyone that went became a sitting duck once the communcations were cut off.  

"You two are the best chance we have," Soo Man repeated, "we need two spies to get into North Korea, collect as much information as they can, and return alive.  The only way to get the information we need is by infiltrating the heart of the North Korean base, breaking through the firewall of their supercomputer, and stealing every file they have.  You leave tomorrow night.  That should give us enough time to formulate a plan."

"Impossible," Key muttered.

"You forget, Key," Yuki said, looking up to face Soo Man, "the words 'impossible' doesn't exist in my dictionary."  Minho finally smirked.

"It doesn't exist in mine either," he said.

Soo Man's eyes widened.  "Does this mean. . ."

"Yes," Minho and Yuki said in unison, "we accept this mission."

"You're both insane," Kris said, glaring at Yuki.  Minho had gone out after the incident in the briefing room and had not yet returned.  Yuki's mind wandered back to her boyfriend for a few moments.  An uncomfortable feeling settled in her stomach.  What is going on with him?

He couldn't be. . . cheating on me?  No, I can't think like that.  Keroro would never. . . but, he WAS a player. . . but he wouldn't. . . to me. . . right?

"YAH!  LITTLE DRAGON!" Kris shouted, "are you even listening to me?!"  

Yuki jumped, wrenched out of her thoughts.  "Sorry.  I heard you," she mumbled.  The rest of EXO and SHINee sighed.  All of them were sitting in the living room of the EXO-K dorm.  EXO had all panicked when SHINee told them about Soo Man's assignment and Minho and Yuki's acceptance of the mission.

"Noona. . ." Kai said, "please. . . don't go. . ."

"I have to, Jongin," Yuki said, saying the boy's actual name affectionately as she patted his head, "an assignment is an assignment."

"But the stories-" Minseok said.

"I know," Yuki replied, "but Keroro and I agreed to it.  We know that it's for the safety of our country."

"But I can't stand the thought of losing either of you. . ." Suho said, "the mission is to dangerous. . ."

"I prioritize this country over my life, Suho," the girl said, "I joined S.M. knowing that I would be assigned this type of mission one day."

"Yuki. . ." Onew said quietly, "we've almost lost you once.  We don't want it to happen again."

Yuki's heart clenched.  The faces on the looks of her friends that dark day were burned into her mind.  Still, the girl pressed on.  "Jinki," she said, "you were the one convincing the others that this had to happen.  You know why I'm doing this.  Don't try to guilt me out of it now."

Jinki gave Yuki a sad, heartbreaking smile.  "I know, I know," he simply said.

"YOU CAN'T LEAVE ME, YOU DUMB IDIOT!" Baekhyun suddenly shouted, making Yuki jump, "after everything we've all been through together?!  You can't just throw your life away!"

"You guys act like I won't come back from the mission alive," Yuki said, "I know what's happened to the other spies.  But I'm different.  I don't believe in losing.  And I DEFINITELY don't believe in losing to the North Koreans.  Keroro and I will go to the spy base, break in, take what he need, and GTFO.  It's a simple mission, really."

"Yeah," Luhan scoffed, "because getting past the border of our greatest enemy, infiltrating their most dangerous base, navigating your way through the entire building in order to find the super computer, and retreiving its information all without getting caught is a piece of cake."

"Like stealing candy from a baby," Yuki replied cheekily, "what's life without a little adventure, Lulu?"

"Um, AT LEAST YOU'D BE ALIVE," came the snarky reply.

The other boys shouted agreements.  Yuki sighed and finally held up her hands to get her friends to shut up.  The sixteen boys in the room finally quieted and looked at Yuki questioningly.  "Listen guys," she said, "you guys can yell at me all you want for accepting the mission, but yelling's not really gonna do anything.  I'm still going to go, aren't I?"

Her statement was met by sixteen glares.  "Right," Yuki said, answering her own question, "now, are you guys gonna help me strategize or what?  If you know I'm going to go anyways, we might as well try to maximize my chances of survival, right?"

Grumbling, the boys stood up.  "Let's get a move on then," Jinki said, "we only have today to select your gadgets, weapons, and strategies."

"Yeah," Jonghyun mumbled, "one day to make sure we do everything in our power to make sure you and Minho don't ing die."

"That's the spirit!" Yuki said brightly as she began pushing the boys out of the dorm.

My Ice Princess ❄:

Hey. . . you just kinda disappeared.  Where'd you go?  Is everything okay?

Minho stared at the text message and scratched his head, realizing his mistake.  "Gotta be more careful. . ." he muttered as he typed out a reply.

My Keroro ㅍ_ ㅍ:

I'm fine.  Just went out to breathe for a little bit.  I figured the open air would help me try to come up with a plan for our mission.

"I knew I was just being an idiot!" Yuki exclaimed to herself as she read the message, "I swear I freak myself out wayyy too much.  Hm, I'll tell him to meet the boys and me at S.M.  He should be there while we strategize. . ."

My Ice Princess ❄:

Ahh, okay.  Do you mind meeting me, EXO, and the rest of SHINee back at S.M.?  We're going to strategize.

My Keroro ㅍ_ ㅍ:

All right.  I'll see you in a little bit.

My Ice Princess ❄:

Okay~  See ya.

Minho was the last person to enter the Briefing Room.  Yuki looked up and nodded at him once before turning back to the holographic map in the middle of the table.  Minho silently walked over and stood next to her.  "What do we got?" he asked.

"Kai, Tae, Xiumin, Jjong, and Kris are working together to figure out gadgets and weapons.  Luhan and Sehun are trying to intercept and decode any messages between North Korean soldiers that would give us any inkling to where they're most heavily concentrated along the border, and everyone else is in here helping us strategize."

The EXO boys had absolutely no reason to work with SHINee.  This wasn't their mission.  Yet, EXO cared about Yuki and Minho just as much as SHINee did.  For this reason, they took time out of their own schedules to help.

"I see," Minho said, "and what are you looking at?"

"I'm analyzing a map of the border," Yuki explained as she touched the hologram and shifted things around, "I can't technically do anything until Luhan and Sehun come back with some kind of info, but I can at least see where we would want to end up once we manage to actually cross into North Korea."

Minho nodded and stared at the map intently.  "Obviously the first thing we'd be looking for is a part of the border that isn't being heavily patrolled," he said, "the second thing we'd be looking for is a good cover.  On top of that, we have to actually figure out where the base is located, so we can look for a close spot to land."

"Unfortunately," Yuki spied, "finding the base is going to have to be a hands-on experience.  There's no way to track it down from here."

"Damn," the boy cursed, "that really doesn't help our situation."

"I know.  There's too many ing complications," Yuki grumbled, slamming her fist against the table in frustration.

"Guys!" Luhan and Sehun suddenly shouted as they burst through the door, "we have news!"

"What's going on?" Lay asked, looking up from a map he had been reading.

"We managed to decode an intercepted message from North Korea's military base!" Luhan said in excitement.

Minho and Yuki's heads snapped up immediately.  "What did it say?" the girl asked, "anything important?"

"You bet," Sehun said, "I have to admit, Soo Man-ssi and President-ssi are complete geniuses.  They managed to turn bad situation into something that could work in our favor."

Everyone in the room except for Luhan and Sehun looked completely confused.  "What the hell are you two talking about?" Key asked.

"A leak managed to reach the North Koreans," Luhan said, causing everything to gasp sharply.

"Guys," Sehun said, "don't worry.  Allow us to explain.  North Korea caught wind of the fact that South Korea was going to launch a naval attack on the western side of the border, where it touches the ocean."

"There goes the element of surprise," Lay muttered.  Luhan held up a finger and continued.

"President-ssi said the same thing until Soo Man-ssi came up with a brilliant idea," he said.  "So, another 'leak of information' just so happened to reach North Korea."

Everyone's eyes widened in shock.  Just as they were about to start shouting, Sehun spoke up again.

"Guys," the younger boy said, rolling his eyes, " 'leak'."  He made sure to put air quotes around the work "leak."  "Soo Man-ssi leaked a false trail.  Information on a non-existent attack that's going to occur on a certain part of the border within the same range as the naval attack.  Which means-"

"North Korea's going to get as many soldiers as they can to congregate towards that section of the border," Minho said in amazement, "that's brilliant!"

"That means that all we have to do is find a clear hole!  It doesn't even have to be completely clear!  We can come up with a plan to maneuver it!" Yuki exclaimed.

"Okay!" Jinki said, "everyone pay attention to the map!"  Everyone in the room turned to face the hologram in the middle of the table.  "Sehun, Luhan," he instructed, "point out the area where Soo Man said the 'attack' would be."  Luhan immediately stepped forward and touched his fingers to the screen.  He tapped an area near the far left-hand of the border, where some of the South Korean forces were set up.  Then, he touched an area slightly farther away from it.  The spaces became red in response to Luhan's touch.  Suddenly, multiple red and blue dots popped up on the screen.  Blue signified the South Korean forces and red their North Korean foes.

"Right," Jinki said, "so, assuming the bluff actually works," he tapped a section of the hologram and all the dots started moving around, "based on our studies of North Korea's military tendencies, it would be an automatic reaction to shift a majority of their forces towards the area of threat.  Here."  A majority of the red dots congregated towards the area that Jinki tapped.  "However, the North Koreans wouldn't be stupid enough to leave the other areas of the border unprotected.  They're at least going to have a few guards covering any given section."

"Well, that's where we develop our plan to get these two across," Baekhyun said, jerking his head in Minho and Yuki's direction.

"Actually," Chanyeol piped, "I think our first concern is figuring out where the most lightly guarded sections of the border are."

"I'm going to have to agree with Yeol on that one," Suho said, nodding his head, "we need to find potential landing points.  Since we have no idea where their spy base is as of now, I suppose it doesn't matter where you two initially end up."

A light bulb went off in Yuki's head.  "I need to talk to Taemin," she said abruptly.  The others in the room turned to look at her. 

"Why?" Minho asked in confusion.

"You'll see," the girl responded as she tapped her watch a few times.  Taemin's head popped up on her watch screen a few seconds later.

"Is something the matter, Noona?" the boy asked.

"Minnie," Yuki said, "I'm going to need you to go back into your database.  I need some help."  The boy nodded and proceeded and turned to face Jongin, telling him that he'd be back momentarily.  Yuki waited as the boy exited the Gadgets Department and headed towards the SHINee Spy Unit in order to access his main computer.

"Okay, I'm here," Taemin said as he sat down and logged on to his computer, "what do you need, Noona?"

"Do you still have all that data from the tracker I planted on that North Korean spy at the Governor's Ball way back when?"

Taemin's eyes widened.  "What in the world do you want with that, Noona?  The tracker stopped functioning, remember?"

"I know, I know.  I'll explain everything.  Just answer my questions first," Yuki replied.  Taemin shrugged and ran a quick search on his computer.  

"Found it," he said after a few seconds of silence.  

"Okay," the girl replied, sitting down at the conference table, "so you said that the tracker was designed to send GPS coordinates to you every ten miles it traveled, correct?"

"Right."

"When did the tracker start sending you GPS coordinates?"

"The first GPS coordinates were sent to me when I first activated the tracker at the end of the Governor's Ball, so my first coordinates were the revenue of the ball."

"Given at what time?"

"Midnight."

"And what time did you recieve the next alert?  And what were the coordinates?"

In this manner, Yuki took down every single time and position that Taemin gave her, plotting her position points on a holographic map in front of her.  When Taemin gave her his last recorded location, Yuki nodded.  "Would you be able to tell me the exact time that your tracker was knock off-line, Tae?"

"Yeah," Taemin said, quickly pulling up the time and saying out loud for Yuki to record, "now will you please explain what you're doing?"

"Seriously," Suho said, "what is going on in that mind of yours, Bul Yuki?"

"Right," Yuki said, studying the points carefully, "pay attention, boys, because I'm about to give you your first logic lesson."

The boys crowded around Yuki, waiting for her justification.  "The first thing you need to notice is that the spy kept a pretty constant pace throughout his trip.  For the first half, we can assume he was traveling by car given the nature of the points as well as President-ssi's information.  Once he got to the border, things started slowing down.  He exited the car and made it back into his own country before he began proceeding farther north.  Now, if we keep following these points. . ."  Yuki bit her lip in concentration as she followed the position points on her map.  "The points cut off here," she finally said, pointing to a spot a little ways from the border, "a little ways from Kaesong."

"Kaesong?" Minho said in surprise, "as in the city?"

Yuki nodded.  "Yeah."

"Are we going to be working off the assumption we made about their elecronics running on a different frequency?" he queried.

"Yes.  Which would mean that North Korea's spy base is located somewhere near-"

"The outskirts of Kaesong," the pair finished together.

The EXO and SHINee boys in the room looked at Yuki, their jaws practically hitting the floor.  "How did you-" Tao began to ask.

"Logic," Yuki replied simply, "so now we know where we need to go."

"How do you know it's on the OUTSKIRTS of Kaesong?" Key asked, "for all we know, it could be in the center of the city."

"Actually," Minho said, "it can't.  If you remember about theory about the North Korean spy base, Key, Ice Princess and I said that the base has an electromagnetic forcefield that engulfs an "x-mile" radius.  Any electronic that falls within that radius will automatically shut down.  We suspect that the spy base itself is running on a different electronic frequency, permitting them to naver the forcefield.  Obviously, they can't adjust the technology in all of Kaesong.  Not only would it be easy for us to identify the frequency, but it would be impractical for them.  They're probably staying away from the majorly populated areas of the city and  have their base a little ways away from the heart of it."

"I can't. . . your guys' brains are on a whole 'nother level," Jongdae said with wide eyes.

Minho and Yuki looked at each other and shrugged.  "Sure," they said in unison.

"Now," Yuki said with a smirk on her face, "we move on to true strategizing."

Yep, an early update today for the Dino's birthday!!! ^_^  

I hope you guys all liked the chapter~  It took me a while to work out the kinks for how they would strategize.  I really had to put my brain in military mode for this xD  I don't really have much to say for this chapter, except that things are really starting to heat up.  I wonder what awaits our duo. . . 

IN OTHER NEWS:  WE HIT A NEW MILESTONE, GUYS!!!  20 UP-VOTES!!! :DD

Thank you so much to the newest up-voter that got us to the milestone!!  YAY~

rizac91

No new flurries since Friday, but that's okay!! ^_^

Guys, please do continue to comment, subscribe, and up-vote!!  Let me know what you think about the story!!!  Express yourselves!! xD  Tell me your thoughts!  (Or maybe express them by subbing or up-voting xD <3)  

Ummm, I think that's pretty much it. . .~

HAHAHA JUST KIDDING.  DID YOU THINK I WASN'T GOING TO SPAM YOU GUYS WITH THE BIRTHDAY BOY?!  LOL

Okay guys, I'm done xD  Have a lovely rest of the week, my flurries <3

~Yuki ❄