They returned to an abandoned city. The boys clung to one another as they stared at their old teacher’s back. They didn’t know what was wrong or where all the people went. They didn’t know why they couldn’t feel anyone. They didn’t know why their good day had turned so sour. They had gone swimming and learning and flying throughout the whole afternoon. Now it felt like the world had fallen in and all they could do was stand and be shocked at the silence.

The teacher began walking, around the cold hard city. It was silent, it felt lonely. The boys looked at each other for a moment before Luhan stepped forward and grabbed the younger children’s hand. The boys followed after their teacher, keeping their footsteps light, afraid of breaking the complete silence. One of the boys, Jongin, fell down. He was just a toddler so it was understandable. The entire group stopped once he fell. The boy nearest to Jongin, Chanyeol, leaned down with his slightly larger frame and helped the young child up.

In this manner the boys followed their teacher. Their teacher followed nothing, just the whims of his feet and the hope of his heart. He wasn’t supposed to be in charge of these young boys. He was just supposed to keep them occupied for the afternoon, give the rest of the community a break from their wandering minds. He was old and tired. To have the steady feel of their eyes on his back was too much for the old being. He kept walking. He heard the continual pad of their feet on the stone hallways, the constant reminder of their presence. He couldn’t turn around and see the look of utter dependency he could already feel from their presence.

He wasn’t supposed to care for them. They were too special, too important for a being of his stature. But it had been decided that they must go play and enjoy themselves (actually give the elders a break as well) before they took their duty. He wasn’t even sure what their duty was, just that they had been chosen. He didn’t know if it was by fate or by whim. All he could hope for was that everyone was in their rooms sleeping and that, in a couple hours, they would wake up and take care of these precocious boys. Someone more advanced than him should take care of them. Someone more capable of shaping these boys into the legends they would become.

But all that was there was the silent pad of little feet and gazes too heavy for such small bodies. The teacher knew without turning who was watching him so closely. It was Suho, the prince, who the other boys had naturally enclosed in a protective circle even as he held little Sehun’s hand. Tao, as always, would be watching quietly from the outskirts, wary even with Yifan beside him.

The teacher entered more rooms, even risking going into areas that required a higher rank than he had. No one was anywhere. He worked his way up the ranks until he found the final door that he could not open.

“Suho,” the teacher called out voice echoing in the chilled silence, “Come here.”

Suho broke free from the other children and came to stand next to his teacher.

“Yes, teacher?” He asked looking up at his teacher with the detachment of one in shock.

“Will you please open this door?” The teacher asked, gesturing to the final double doors.

“Yes, teacher.” That was all Suho said as he opened the door with a gentle pull.

The teacher and Suho walked into the room. The king’s chambers. And what they saw was both a relief and a worry. All around on every surface were people. People were strewn about haphazardly and without order. The only semblance of peace in the room was the gentle sound of sleeping. All of the inhabitants of the room, other than the teacher and the boys, were fast asleep.

The teacher gave a sigh of relief and uttered a small short word of thanks to anyone who was listening. The boys, meanwhile, had begun moving around the room looking for their parents.

“Mom!” Jongdae called as he peered about the bodies, “Where are you? I was so worried! Mom!”

The other boys likewise called out to their beloved family members, ignoring the heavy absence of their thoughts.

“Mom!” cried out Yixing as he saw his mother’s slumped form, “Mom you’re here! I’m back!”

His mother made no response, just continued her gentle slumber. Around the room, the other boys encountered the same problem.

“Momma!” Minseok pleaded into his mother’s ear, trying to wake her up in the gentle way that she always woke him up with.

The teacher slowly began to understand the situation. Among the cries and pleading of the children, he came to the realization that the slumberous could not be woken. He shook the nearest being as hard as he could, no response. He remembered vaguely hearing in the news about a scientist who had figured out how to skip millennia. The teacher had never understood the need to skip forward in time, it wasn’t like they could die without wanting to, and so there was no point to not living when you could.

It was after the teacher came to the realization that, if everyone had tried to skip forward in time, then he would be left in charge of the predestined boys, that Suho approached him with a small wooden box.

“What is this Suho?” The teacher asked the small boy, leaning over to talk to him.

“It doesn’t belong here,” Suho simply said, “I think it means something.”

“Well let’s open it and see, shall we?” On the inside the teacher was trembling, if they left behind a message to him then it must include instructions and the teacher was not willing to take care of and raise twelve young boys, all of whom had a meaningful air around them.

With slightly unsteady hands, the teacher slid the lid off of the box. Inside was a note, a piece of stone, and a picture.

The note read:

                Hello. My name is not important just know that I know who you are. No method you can try will wake them up, trust me I tried. Inside this box are the keys to waking them up, you will need to use them both. The tablet explains how to wake them up, I do not understand it otherwise I would tell you. The other key is the picture. It has a time and address on it, just go there at the time and explain yourself. That place is not of our planet. Take one of the Travelers and head to the planet they call Earth. It is the place that still has wars but has the capability for understanding emotions. The planet is mostly sea, and the people live on land.

                Once you get within a year of the time stated on the picture, send a message to the human in the picture explaining our predicament and asking for help, you should be able to. If the human is resistant, remind them of this message.

                I am sorry that I do not know you better, I wish I had had more time, but I know that you will do the best that you can. Train the 12 to do the most that they can. Teach them to survive and rely on each other. Don’t forget to teach them to transform their bodies and how to exist off of elements.

You were never trained for this, so thank you for your sacrifice.

                Also, don’t tell them about this note, just about the keys.

The box was a simple picture of a creature, a human. It was smiling and seemed to be enjoying itself. On the back of the picture, in an unsteady hand, read: 1800, Ryder St WA. 2014 full moon of 10^th month. These numbers didn’t make any sense to the teacher, he knew that in time they would but all he could do was hope that they made it there.

The teacher rubbed his face. He sat there for a few moments, aware of Suho’s careful eyes watching his movements. The teacher gathered his strength and all the power he had.

“Alright class! We are going to leave everyone to take their nap and once we come back we will wake them up. Everyone to the Traveler! No need to worry.”

Reluctantly, the kids pulled away from their loved ones. The older ones were able to read the underlying finality of their teacher’s statement and took one long last look at their family.

Jackie flopped down on her bed. She got out her laptop, charger, notebook and her trusty pencil. Time to do some homework after a long day at school. She checked her email first, hoping against all odds that her teachers would decide to revise their homework load and give her the night off. Of course, no such emails appeared. Something interesting did occur, her long time teammate had sent her an email with a subject line of “HELP! I don’t understand thiiiiiiiisssssss!!!!!!!!”

With a small chuckle Jackie opened the email and opened the attachment. It was a video. A man, who looked vaguely familiar like a guy from a commercial, appeared on the screen.

“Oh hello! Can you see me? Marvelous! Well allow me to introduce myself, I am the esteemed teacher of the Twelve! Yes, yes, calm your excitement for I have come to tell you that we are in most desperate need of help.”

What on Earth is this? Jackie thought.

“Our entire population, other than myself and the Twelve, has been rendered, well, asleep, in your terms. As you can see, this is a very serious problem and you are one of the keys! Yes, well, I think you are, no you are, yes see? I have done some serious research on you Jackie Ryder don’t worry you are the one. Yes, you, Jackie Ryder are who I have been tirelessly hacking your rudimentary systems to contact. I have tried many times in the past to send you this, many different places actually, but you seem to completely IGNORE your junk file folder, and that is unacceptable. I had to make it so you would look at this somehow. We should be coming in roughly a year or two by your standards at least that is approximately when you’ll receive this. Or maybe not, that’s how we have been doing things lately but that might change. This is a prerecorded message but don’t forget that I know who you are. Don’t forget this message Jackie Ryder, we will come. Good bye!”

The window closed on its own and Jackie just stared at her computer screen in confusion. She tried to go back to the video and figure out just what had happened but the email was gone. She tried to go through her history and her download history but couldn’t find any evidence of the strange video.

Needless to say, Jackie was highly confused, extremely frightened, and coped by passing the video off as a strange hallucination from the stress of school. It was an incredibly realistic hallucination, but that was all it was.

Speaking of school, she glanced at the time and realized that she had a mountain of homework to do and grudgingly got started on it. She couldn’t help her mind from wandering back to the strange panic in the man’s voice.

Over the course of the next year she would randomly be reminded of that strange video -- hallucination. She never quite trusted the Internet after that, even though she knew it was fake, the thought that someone could potentially access all her records ruined any sense of safety she had willingly pretended to have.

The boys traveled to many planets using the Traveler they had taken from their home planet. Everywhere they went, they would link with the native people and hunt for where they called “Earth.” They took into consideration the possibility of different languages and so each planet would take years at a time to test. One of the planets they visited wasn’t so friendly to visitors.

Upon their arrival the Traveler was shot down nearly immediately.

“Kyungsoo, the engines, Yifan, communications tell them we mean no harm! Yixing, stabilize the medical center, Minseok, the kitchens, Channie, search for any weapons we might have on board, Chen, Luhan, help him.” The teacher instructed, sending all of the twelve every which way. “Suho! The box! You can’t lose the box!” The teacher remembered sending the former Prince to do the most important task. Suho, however, had already left and was clutching the box to his chest. When Suho returned to the bridge, the ground was closer than he had originally thought.

He only had time for one thought, which he sent out to all of the other twelve.

“Brace!”

The collision was both faster and slower than anticipated. It was faster in that it changed everything that they had ever known in the space of five minutes. It was slower in that every rock, every tremble of the ship, every pain felt was imbedded in their minds.

They communicated mostly with their minds, preferring to share information rather than to tell it. It was subconscious, every member of the twelve was constantly in contact with each other. Therefore, their pain was a collective and all could feel the others disappearing from the connection. Sehun was the last one conscious after the crash and all he could feel, beyond his own pain, was the emptiness where the other Twelve should be. He could only hope that this emptiness wasn’t forever and that if it was, that he could join it quickly.

When Sehun woke the first thing he felt was the rest of the Twelve and he nearly cried with relief.

Don’t be so happy, Jongdae cautioned with his mind and showed Sehun the occupants of this planet.

They had advanced to the stage of their development after their gods had abandoned them. Thus they reacted rather poorly when other members of the god species showed up. It took the teacher much explaining that they were not the same gods who had been sent to rule over them. They had not believed the teacher and had killed him in a fit of rage.

At that a communal expression of overwhelming grief occurred over the connection. Suho’s determined mindset continued the story after Jondae’s broke off and couldn’t continue.

After they killed him, which caused the awake members of the twelve to react violently showing, the occupants of the planet decided that it wouldn’t be a good idea to fight them. They sent them to rooms that had been adapted to the requirements of the race of gods. That was where they were now.

Baekhyun picked up the story.

The worst part is that they don’t value him like we did. They think that we are somehow superior to him and that it isn’t a loss now that he is dead. They don’t know that he is the only one who was ever allowed to look at the box, even though we know what is inside it. I want them to hurt the same way that we have.

Yixing sent calming thoughts and emotions over the connection to Baekhyun, soothing him.

We can’t do anything now. I want them to pay as well but it won’t solve anything. They were betrayed by their “gods” who they think we are. We know that we are not gods but they do and nothing we say or do will stop them from thinking that. I know that in our history as a species we have watched over other races, guiding them and raising them before watching them tear themselves apart. We are just lucky in that we can live indefinitely and we should be grateful to teacher for imparting that in us before he left.

Another surge of rage and sorrow flowed into the connection. Sehun sent one clear thought to the others.

So we just keep on going? Finish what we started?

Resoundingly the Twelve agreed.

Yes, yes we will.

Jackie got out of her car, mind thinking about the homework she had to do and exactly how she would do it.

A lot had changed in the last year. Both of her older siblings had essentially dropped off the map. One went to Johannesburg for business and the other was away at college. The one at college, an older sister, spent every moment either working or studying and had long informed her family members that she wouldn’t be able to see them for at least a year. Likewise, the one in Johannesburg, an older brother, cited large plane fares as a reason for isolation.

Jackie knew the real reason. It was hard to be an independent person under the roof of parents, she felt that way too, some days. She didn’t resent them for leaving but it did give their, overly large, house an empty feel. The house didn’t lack coziness, it just felt like it was waiting for everything to be normal again with many pairs of footsteps fighting for the remote, or couch space.

Nonetheless her house was a home. Neither of her parents were home yet, and normally Jackie would be singing and dancing just because she could but she was worn out from a long day of learning. She immediately went upstairs and changed into her pajamas putting her hair up in the “top knot” that her brother used to mock so much.

She had just settled in to do her homework, and mope about the fact that one of the groups she talked the most about with her friend, EXO, had a concert near her THAT SHE COULDN’T GO TO, when the doorbell rang. She jumped up in shock before running downstairs pulling on a sweatshirt on the way. She didn’t have time to fix her hair or pull the hoodie hood back so she looked like a mess when she opened the door.

Standing in front of the door were lots of people. The first thing she noticed was that they were all very tall, which she noticed because she hated being short. The second thing she noticed was that they were all Asian. The third thing she noticed was that they were male, she was not wearing a bra, and they all looked familiar (and quite attractive).

Without introduction one of them grabbed her face with a grip of steel. This forced all of the other thoughts out of her head.

She fought back immediately.

“Let me go! What the heck!” She swung her arms at his arm before finding out that that had no effect. She decided to try twisting out of his grip, that didn’t work either. She settled on grabbing his arm and trying to dig into his arm with her fingernails.

During this entire escapade, the man holding her simply held up a picture next to her face and looked between them, comparing them. After several moments of silence he spoke, “Smile.”

“Only if you let me go,” she managed to say as adrenaline pumped through her veins.

He immediately let go and stared at her expectantly. She didn’t waste a moment and shut the door in their faces. She locked it as she turned to run. She rounded the corner to the kitchen to call the police before being snatched by strong arms. She began fighting immediately trying to drop her center of gravity to pull him down as well so that she could reach the phone.

When she tried to drop he simply picked her up and held her so that she couldn’t move her limbs. Deciding that that there were other ways to fight she started screaming as loud as she could. Her warm cozy house was also quite removed from the surrounding houses so she knew that this was a long shot. Nevertheless she continued to scream and try to fight the man holding her although she could do little more than flop in his arms. He carried her back into the main hallway where the rest of the men were waiting, clearly having just walked through the door.

It was silent save for her screaming as the men simply stared at each other. She got confused by their inaction and casual air and slowly stopped screaming. The man holding her smirked slightly at the other men. He then let her down, this time all of them formed a circle around her blocking off a sprint to the kitchen.

“We have decided to explain to you the truth.” The one who had held up the picture said clearly.

“We are not from this planet. Our planet is in danger and you are a key to save our planet. I believe that we, our teacher,” a silent pause went around the room, “sent you a message informing you that we were coming and asking for your help. Did you receive it?”

She stared in confusion at the many people around her. Then she tried to speak.

“What?” her voice cracked, “I mean, I got,” she coughed to clear , “I got some weird email yeah but are you guys aliens? Are there twelve of you? I guess I just don’t understand, and I don’t understand what’s going on and I’m really confused and I’m very scared so I don’t understand the question.” One of the men in the back rolled his eyes and the man who had held up the picture sharply turned and looked at him. That didn’t make any sense, there was no way that the person who had held up the picture could have seen the other guy roll his eyes.

“Wait, what?” Jackie asked, “How’d you know?”

“Know what? Where to find you? We have a picture and it is one of our keys. It told us to come here at this point in time.”

“What? No, I-I just mean how did you know he was rolling his eyes, you weren’t looking at him.”

The picture guy smiled slightly before striking a deal, “If I tell you how, and prove it, will you believe us and help us?”

“Believe what?” she asked indignantly.

“Believe that we are aliens and that we need your help to save our planet.”

“Of course,” she said exasperatedly under her breath, “Only if it is irrefutable, then I guess yeah,” she continued in a louder voice. She felt like she was lost in a sea of insanity and was clinging to her lifeboat of logic. She could feel her body swaying side to side, unbalanced from the rush of events. What was going on?

“We don’t communicate the same way humans do. Instead of speaking like you do we simply share our minds with one another. It is much faster than speaking and it gets the point across much quicker.”

She stared back at him, mental gears slowly chugging their way through the impossible.

“That is why I didn’t have to look at him to know he was rolling his eyes. I could feel it.” The picture man went on to explain.

“Ok, and I need to come up with a way to test that? Right?” First confront the easy steps, ignore the simple fact that everything they are saying is impossible. Follow logic, baby steps.

“Yes, or I could offer one to you instead.”

“No, cause then you could rig it.” She thought for a moment before asking, “Can you only share ideas or can you share verbatim sentences?”

“We can do both, we just typically do overall ideas because the representation of them into words typically is more trouble than it is worth.”

“Ok, how about I go somewhere and tell one of you something and then someone else has to tell me what I said.”

“And if we prove it you will help us?” the picture man demanded again.

“I won’t promise that, but I will be more accepting to new ideas, you guys did just assault me so you’re gonna have to give me some slack.”

“Ok, who are you going to tell?”

“Him,” she stated gesturing to the smallest, softest looking one of them. While she knew that he was probably much stronger than she was, he wasn’t as tall as everyone else and that made her feel better.

Jackie brought the soft looking one to the far end of the hallway.

“Can you ask them to move to the other end of the hallway first?”

He nodded, slightly intimidated by the no nonsense attitude of the key. She was not anything like he had been expecting.

The other members of the Twelve moved to the far corner, still milling around slightly and staring at her.

“Thanks,” she said, before leaning up to his ear and whispering in the softest voice she could muster.

“Alright, the one of you on my left, yes you, tell me what I told him,” she directed the rest of the men.

“Genghis Khan wasn’t as bad as everyone thought, he also created the pax mongolica.” He projected into the room.

“Oh… OK. I’m gonna have to think about that a bit,” she said as she heard her whispered words clearly spoken to the room. She put her hands to her face and remembered that her hair was still in its top knot, though it had been essentially destroyed and had fallen down by her rush to escape. She quickly put it up into a high ponytail as she allowed her mind to digest what had just happened. That the impossible had just been proved, that sentence was too off the wall for people to just guess.

Jackie responded mechanically to the bizarre situation, moving towards the center of her home, the kitchen.

“In the meantime, do you guys want anything to eat or drink? I know I could go for a large glass of water.”

They nodded and the guy she had whispered to smiled broadly as she left towards the kitchen. All the men took their shoes off before entering the rest of the house. She worked busily in the kitchen, grabbing a glass and filling it with water. She chugged the glass before refilling it and sipping it in a more acceptable fashion. By this time, all of the men had come into the kitchen and had joined her around the kitchen island. There were only four chairs, one of which she occupied, so the majority of them were left standing.

Her good host upbringing forced her back to her feet and back towards the pantry.

“Anything you guys want I guess you can have, just don’t eat me out of house and home, cups are here, plates and bowls are here, food is in there, more food is in the fridge, oh and don’t eat the croissants, they are for bread pudding and I need them. But other than that go crazy.” She pointed to the different storage places in the room, dealing with absurdity through an attempted normalcy.

They moved around the kitchen at that and grabbed some snacks. They also grabbed some water. Once they all had their supplies, she directed them to the couches.

All of them just barely fit on the various couches. She sat down first and curled up in the corner of one of the three couches and squeezed a pillow between her knees and her chest. She kept in her hand the glass of water, she was onto her third one. Drinking water gave her something to do with her hands.

Once all of them sat down she did a quick mental count. Twelve, there are twelve of them. The unwanted part of her mind chimed “that’s as many people as EXO has! Or a lacrosse team! Or a large basketball team!”

An even more unwanted part of her mind reminded her that that was how many people the video had mentioned.

One of them started to snigger into his hand. He happened to be the one sitting directly next to her.

“What’s funny?” she asked, although she was coming up with a worrisome theory. If they shared their thoughts with one another and that was how they communicated, then what if she was accidentally telling them things she didn't want them to know?

He started laughing harder, which only confirmed her suspicions.

“are you kidding me?” She asked the world at large. “fine, you know what, I’m just gonna not care if you can hear what I think. Screw you all. You are stupidly fast and incredibly annoying and I trust you as much as I can throw you so whatever.”

The one who held up the picture just laughed as he could feel the truth behind her words emanating from her.

“So, like, how does this work? What all do you know and how do you know it. And can you just start from the beginning, I am so confused,” she asked, her voice dwindling down as she realized how much she didn’t understand.”

“The very beginning?” The one who had rolled his eyes asked.

“Yes?” she answered before quickly following up with, “But we can start with names first, I might make you wear nametags, and then start with the bare bones of what is going on so I can start understanding. And then tell me how much you know about my mind.”

They silently looked around at each other, silent conversation passing between them.

“Sure, just one quick question,” the one who grabbed her started, “What do you think when I say the word EXO?”

“Huh?” was her only response before she followed it up with, “like an exoskeleton for bugs? Or uh,” she paused trying to find another example, before smiling and blushing slightly before refusing to allow herself to be embarrassed because those stupid people already probably knew what she was thinking, “EXO?”

Instead of the teasing smiles she expected to see, they wore similar expressions of horror and a resigned attitude. They looked at each other with worried glances and she did some quick mental math.

There were twelve of them. They knew what EXO was and it obviously had nothing to do with an exoskeleton. They were all Asian. If she admitted to herself they all could be found attractive, even though she had been busy with the whole alien thing.

“No way.”

They looked at her.

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

She started to get angry.

“What the hell? How does that even work? What? Why? How? This is a joke.”

They sat there, not sure how to respond to her.

“Wait, if you guys are aliens, and I am pretty freaking sure you are, then why do you look like humans? Why are you guys EXO? Why are you even here? Who are you? What is going on? Am I insane? I really don’t want to be, I like being sane, please don’t tell me I am insane,” she asked, her questions stumbling over each other until slowly turning to a plea that died in the silent air.

“What do you want us to tell you?” A man who hadn’t spoken yet said. She looked up at him through tears of frustration that welled up in her eyes. Big eyes, poofy hair, and a face that looked liable to fake innocence even if it was dead serious. Luhan. And the guy who had rolled his eyes was Chen. And the guy who grabbed her was Kai. And the guy who held the picture up was Kris. And the guy in the back was Chanyeol. And the soft short one was Xiumin. And they were actually EXO. How could they be EXO?

The Twelve followed her thought process as her eyes flitted to each newly discovered member. They felt her rising panic and her desperate will to just calm down and let the crazy wash over her and handle this in a calm and orderly fashion. She wanted to be accepting and handle everything in the way that she handled everything, with poise. With calm and patience but intense competition. She always challenged herself to do that one small thing better each day. She wanted to rise above the situation and roll with the punches.

But she couldn’t. She didn’t understand anything and everything was happening too quickly and she just remembered that she had a paper to write but how was she going to do it all?

The Twelve watched as she began having a panic attack.

“Lay,” Suho called out, “help her.” In the far corner of her mind, where Jackie was still analyzing everything, she appreciated the small gesture of speaking aloud to simplify things and let her know what was going on.

Lay approached her and she looked up at him from the tight ball she had curled herself into on the couch, removing herself from even slightly touching the person next to her, Baekhyun.

“It’ll be ok,” Lay assured her, which caused another question to spring to the forefront of her mind, how do they speak English?

“I need to touch you to make it easier, but if you don’t want me to touch you, I can try to do it without touching you, but it might make you more scared.” Lay carefully explained, forcing Jackie to focus on him.

“I-I don’t think I could get much more freaked out,” she said in a bad attempt at humor, “It’s ok, just do whatever you are going to do anyway. It wouldn’t make a difference on the end result would it?”

“No it wouldn’t,” he smiled softly before touching her toes which peeked out from the ball she had curled herself into.

She immediately felt a strange emotion passing into her. It was strange and foreign and unwelcome. She began fighting it, forcing away the intrusion. No matter what she did, the emotion began to overtake her. Jackie couldn’t think properly to speak for herself, but her intentions did. The Twelve were all connected to her through Lay and they could feel her desperate fight to stop Lay. They could all feel her horror and resistance. They could also feel the resolve and disgust within Lay.

“Finish it,” Suho said.

The response came quickly. Lay let out a twinge of frustration as he showed them how difficult she was being.

“Tell her to relax, it’ll be ok,” Baekhyun said from his position next to Jackie. She overheard their spoken conversation and decided to take their advice.

She tried to relax herself. It didn’t help that the wave of emotion wouldn’t stop trying to take over her body. She felt an overwhelming emotion of, it will be ok. She immediately responded to the feeling with an intonation of her own, are you sure about that? A small feeling of amusement came back, yes now stop fighting it.

She was getting quite tired from this unending war with the emotion that was trying to take over, but decided to just let it win. If they killed her she was going to come back and kill them, and then kill them again for good measure.

She let down the mental defenses and allowed the emotion in. It came crashing in, destroying everything in its path. All of the thoughts, all of the questions, all of the drawn conclusions, everything. All of her mental capacity was blown apart by the wave of emotion.

Belatedly, Jackie realized that that emotion was calm. It was ironic that such a peaceful emotion could decimate everything so completely. When she began to be able to think properly again, she found herself, surprisingly, quite calm.

She opened her eyes to see the spot next to her taken up by Lay, not Baekhyun. His hand was still touching her toes. She simply looked at him for a moment. He looked like he was sleeping.

Her thoughts were so taken up by the careful study of his face that she didn’t notice the stares of the Twelve. They felt free to examine her in a more realistic matter than they had while he was being healed.

She had a head of hair that was her first remarkable feature. She was no model, far too sturdy and short. She was very strong, an athlete, which Kai could attest to, her arms had proved that for themselves when she had clutched her knees to her chest. She was wearing what was obviously something she would only wear at home. The sweatshirt was three sizes too large, or thereabouts, and the pants she wore were large plaid patterns.

Now that she was conscious, her facial features stood out. High eyebrows that were sharply defined, eyes that couldn’t decide whether they were green or light brown. Slightly chapped lips and skin that could be good with proper maintenance. She had the type of face that was used to smiling. The crease lines could be seen even though she was not yet an adult. She had the slightest dashing of light freckles which looked more like a light tan than anything else. More than that she had a manner of carrying herself that suggested inner confidence. Even while she was fighting to understand the world, her eyes remained up and her senses stayed aware.

Jackie continued to study Lay, before suddenly realizing that there were other people in the room.

“Sorry,” she said, bashfully ducking her head.

“It’s alright,” Kris said, he could tell that she was scared of him. The Twelve noticed this so D.O took up the conversation.

“What do you want to know?” D.O asked.

“Everything,” Jackie responded with a quick smile, “But just tell me what you need me to do and something I can tell my parents.”

“Alright,” D.O confirmed. The Twelve, minus Lay, looked around at each other shifting through what they were going to say before coming to a conclusion.

“A long time ago, when we were kids, we went out on a field trip with our teacher. When we came back everyone was asleep, a very deep sleep.” Jackie resisted the urge to make a quip about the type of sleep since it was obvious they were dumbing it down (which, really, was what she asked for). She nodded for him to continue.

“No matter what we did, we couldn’t wake anyone up, not our parents, not our friends, not even our king. We finally figured out that they had wanted to “skip” a millennia. Our teacher was not very happy with the circumstances mostly because he was never trained for the job of raising children, let alone twelve. We were going to go on our merry way to wait out the millennia until we found a box. Inside that box, among other things, was a picture and a note. The picture had this address and time and some of what the note said told us to find “Earth” and go to that place. We didn’t know where “Earth” was, because we never really used names for anything everyone just knew what people were referencing. So, we grabbed a spaceship and set out about finding this “Earth”. After about a millennia of searching, spending about 1 to 2 Earth years at each location, we decided to head back to our home and see if they had awoken yet.

“Long story short, they hadn’t and that’s when we knew that something went wrong. Just like the note prepared us for. We continued our search, increasing our training and spending more time thinking and less time resting. It was the third planet we visited in a week, we had been in constant action the whole time. Moving parts and fixing broken things that had been fixed countless times. Our spaceship wasn’t meant to travel so much without stopping at ports. At that planet, they shot down our Traveler—sorry--ship.

“The crash was violent, it took us years to recover to our full potential. In the crash, our teacher died. That was about three and a half years ago. We sent you that video as soon as we could and still have the prerecorded year be in effect. We struck a deal with SM that we would work for them but could terminate our contract at any time. We needed the money. That’s how we are here. There should be a press release about it soon. But we are here because the box told us to and you or the person in the picture is the key to fixing our problem. We can’t leave right away because our spaceship suffered extreme damage which we were only able to fix for one last flight. We are extremely lucky that this is “Earth” and that we found you here. Our Traveler needs to be essentially rebuilt which is why we agreed to work with SM. I personally think that they will never give us our money because they had poured it into this worldwide concert.” D.O finished his long story, his voice fell and rose and told the facts as they were, with only the most easily understood details added.

Jackie sat there in silence for a moment, letting the information sink in. She didn’t have any questions, or confusion with the basic principle of his story. Everything went to hell, they tried to fix it, realized everything was far worse than they had thought, they went through hell, managed on a will and a prayer to make it here, and conned their way to their “key,” which was supposed to be her.

“Alright,” she sighed, “I buy it. Surprisingly. Until I tell my parents, you guys should probably hang out back here.” She led them to the guest bedroom. “I guess it is a bit crowded, we can try the Rec room. Follow me.” She led them to another room, this time with couches aligned in an L-shape and an awkward empty space to the side, “this should work, we can make a big communal bed here, there was originally going to be a pool table and then my older siblings had to go to expensive schools, just chill here, I need to figure out what I am going to tell my parents. And as soon as this weird calm thing wears off I’ll probably freak out again, and it would be better if you guys weren’t here. Especially with Lay out like that.”

Jackie realized that Tao had silently picked Lay up and had carried him with the group throughout the house. The comfortable manner in which they did it gave the impression that this was something they had done countless times.

She left them to their own devices and collapsed on the couch that moments ago EXO had been sitting on. Except EXO wasn’t a kpop group they were freaking aliens. OK better to gloss over that part when explaining the situation to the parentals. Jackie couldn’t think that they wouldn’t eventually be fine with it. If Jackie had accepted their story, then her parents should too, right? Because they are family and they all have similar traits? There was still an hour before they were supposed to come home from work, and while Jackie should be working on that essay due tomorrow, Jackie decided that she needed a nap more than anything else.

Her nap ended up being a prolonged thinking session with her eyes closed rather than an actual sleeping state. The sound of her phone alarm, she set it so that she wouldn’t be too disoriented when they came home, coincided with the sound of an opening door.

Jackie shot up, rubbing the impressions of the couch off of her face.

“Hey honey!” her mom called out as she kept the door open with her foot for her husband, “We brought food!”

“Yay,” Jackie said, still rubbing her face, “Where’s Dad?”

“In the garage,” Her mom responded, putting the bags full of Chinese food on the counter.

“Why?”

“He had to grab something I think, why? Did something happen?” Of course her mom knew her well enough to ask. Whenever anything of note happened Jackie would wait so that she could tell both of them at the same time so she didn’t encounter the problem of missing out a detail of the story that made the story funny.

“Yeah something did. I’ll just wait for him to come back.” Honestly was the best policy.

Unbeknownst to her, Kai was hiding in one of the top cabinets listening to their conversation.

“Is it something bad?”

“Depends how you look at it, but I’ll just wait for Daddy to come back. It isn’t inherently bad or good, it’s just a thing. But it’s an important thing.” Jackie left it at that and waited for her dad to come back.

“Hey Honey,” he said, bringing in his beaten down laptop case.

“Hi Daddy,” Jackie said rather shortly already anticipating the expectant gaze of her mother.

Her dad moved around the room, putting away things and moved towards the food before noticing the silent tension in the room.

“What’s wrong? What did I do?” he asked, a small amount of panic rising in him. He hated doing something wrong.

“Nothing.”

“It’s ok.”

The two women immediately responded and he let out a sigh of relief.

The mom continued, “Jackie has something to tell us.”

“Oh, ok,” her dad let out a sigh of relief, “Is something wrong?”

“No, no I’m ok, it’s nothing like that.” Jackie began, biting the bullet, “It’s actually not like anything so…” She looked up at them, her reluctance shining through her body language, “it’ll probably better if we do this over food, and sitting down,” she smiled up at them.

“Alright,” her mom eventually responded.

Silently the family of three moved around the kitchen, getting out plates and silverware. The air that surrounded the trio was cautiously heavy, hesitantly expectant.

Once they had finally sat down, and Jackie had taken a bite to try to calm her jumping stomach, Jackie began her tale.

“So, uh, give me the benefit of the doubt for a moment and don’t interrupt me and I promise you that I am telling you the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” She smiled slightly at the growing concern on their faces. “I know you won’t believe me but somehow I do. I believe it and it’s crazy but they’ve proven it.”

“Just tell us honey,” Jackie’s dad implored.

Jackie took a deep breath, nodded, and began her story. Jackie was never a good storyteller, her stories would wander down paths that made perfect sense in her head but just confused the listener. One story would prompt another and the original point would be lost in a myriad of explanations.

Somehow, she managed to get through the story. She didn’t let herself look at either of her parents, simply looking past them, so that she didn’t have to see the disbelief and disappointment on their faces at telling such a lie.

She started with the doorbell, glossed over the part where they grabbed her, then told them of how they did things that she knew weren’t possible by humans.

“When I told him the phrase I watched him very carefully for any movements. He didn’t even twitch, there was no way that he could have told them anything with anything physical. So they had to be telling the truth. They have to be telling the truth.”

She then told her parent’s their story, the Twelve’s story. From wandering around looking for “Earth” for nearly two millennia. “I have no idea how they lived that long or why they look like humans but they do.” She then moved into how they found work at a company and came here following a picture that was left in a box. She then told them about the video she saw a year ago.

“He knew my name and told me things about things he couldn’t have known. He said that there would be twelve of them and that they would come one day out of the blue and I would have to help them. That was a year ago, how did they send that if it isn’t true. More importantly, how did they know to send it and actually follow up on it. Even if it’s a prank then they wouldn’t have spent so much time on it and they still wouldn’t have been able to do the talky thing.”

She purposefully didn’t tell them about where they had worked or what Lay had done.

“Oh, right, they can also read minds and stuff, so they have probably been listening the entire time.”

She felt the vaguest twinge of amusement come from the kitchen.

She noticed that they were being really quiet and simply watching her.

“You can talk now, or ask questions, I can answer them or I can just ask one of them to come in here,” Jackie said before turning back to her cold Chinese food.

“I believe you honey, I want you to know that, but can we make them prove it again? Or have them explain how they stayed alive this entire time?”

“Sure,” Jackie mumbled through a mouthful of food, boy was she tired, “let me go get one of them.”

Jackie walked out of the hallway and nearly ran into Kai. He appeared out of nowhere.

“Woah!” she exclaimed quietly, mindful of her freaked out parents in the other room.

“I’ll go,” he said nodding with his head to the kitchen.

Jackie smiled in bafflement at the speed of which everything moved. Her life had been torn upside down in less than four hours. Even Kai seemed to move faster than anything else. Her mind nagged at her that there was a conclusion to be drawn but Jackie forcibly refused to think any deeper than she absolutely had to today.

“I think they were listening,” she announced to her parents who were involved in a heated whispered conversation.

Once Jackie realized the situation, she said, “I can walk right back out and let you talk about it, it won’t hurt my feelings, do what you need to,” she started to walk out of the room, nearly knocking into Kai as she moved. “Just call me when you are ready for the proof, I’ll chill out of sight. Love you!”

Jackie led Kai to another staircase and sat down heavily on the steps. She leaned forward and put her head in her hands. He could feel the question bubbling up inside her, but decided that it would be better if she wasn’t reminded that he knew everything she was thinking.

Jackie opened , her question spilling forth, “How did you do that?”

“Do what?” Kai asked.

Jackie indignantly opened to explain further before muttering, “nevermind, I don’t wanna know.”

Kai smirked at her actions before letting the Twelve know that she was beginning to find out more about them than any other human had. Compared to the other species they had encountered, she was also handling the influx of information quite well and was still questioning her surroundings.

Kai felt Chen’s amusement before receiving his sarcastic question of how obvious could Kai be? Chen sent, if she is already figuring you out then how long will it take her to find out more about the rest of us? No one else has figured us out completely before, even when we explicitly tell them the truth.

Occupied by his silent conversation, and she with her worry over her parents’ reactions, they stood and sat, respectively, in silence. Her mind churned with ideas and outcomes and expectations and plans. They whirled inside her head and she began to feel another panic attack coming.

She took deep breaths and tried to recreate the feeling Lay had created. A wave of calm that overcame her and swept away all thoughts from her head. She was met with mixed success, she was calmer because her mind had been taken off of the chaos in her house but the crashing wave never stopped her from thinking. She was still aware of her surroundings, the way Kai studied everything around him and the slight expressions on his face, which she assumed were from a conversation he was having with the others. He belatedly realized that she was watching him.

Instead of feeling a rush of embarrassment Jackie simply said, “I hope things are going well.”

He heard the worry in her voice and tried to calm her down, “Don’t worry, if they don’t it’s not a problem.”

“What do you mean it’s not a problem?”

Kai tried to backtrack while being mentally berated by the Twelve. “Uh, just that I’m sure your parents will come to believe you.”

“Honey!” Jackie’s parents called from the other room, interrupting their conversation. Jackie shot a confused and wary look at Kai. Even though Kai wasn’t reading her thoughts he knew that she would be asking exactly what he meant by that.

“Coming!” Jackie yelled back. She stood up from her spot on the stairs and took a deep breath. “Let’s do this,” she told Kai, steeling her resolve to answer any questions her parents had. She got distracted by the time, it was nearly eight and since tomorrow was a Friday she had a lot of homework to do.

Jackie entered the kitchen, back straight, shoulders back, and gaze level. Kai followed her in a much more relaxed manner though tension flowed through his veins. It would be so much better if they didn’t have to run, if they could just stay a while in one place. Before coming to Earth they had never had to hide who they were for this long and he could feel the stress it was putting on the Twelve.

Jackie’s parents were sitting at the table in the same position they had been and both were watching Kai warily.

“Hello,” her dad said.

“Hello,” Kai returned the greeting, smiling pleasantly.

“Uh, so do you want proof?” Jackie asked nervously.

“Yes please, honey” her mom said.

“What do you want me to do?” Kai asked.

“What can you do that will prove it?” Jackie’s mom said after a quiet communication with her father.

“Well,” Kai began, “I can read your mind if you want, or I can communicate with my people without any outward signs.”

“Can you do anything else?” the mom asked.

Kai hesitated, waiting for approval from Suho, before answering, “Yes, but I would rather not show you that. Not until I know that you won’t try to stop us.”

“Stop you from what?” Jackie interjected, her earlier worry about their intentions coming back to the surface.

“From saving our planet, we will need your full cooperation.”

“Before you start talking about that, just prove it to us. Is there anything you can show us that will prove it other than what you already showed Jackie?” her dad’s calm voice stopped Jackie from continuing her line of questioning.

Kai didn’t respond.

“You are really fast, I don’t think that a human can move as fast as you did,” Jackie spoke, leveling her eyes on Kai.

Kai saw the challenge she was issuing. She suspected the truth and had given him two choices. 1) to tell them some of the truth and confirm her suspicions, or 2) don’t tell them, lose their trust, and end up having to kidnap the key and be on the run again. Before Suho had time to think over the situation Kai picked the lesser evil.

“I can move very quickly. Sometimes people can’t see me because I move too fast,” Kai admitted playing the part and looking down at the table.

“That works!” her dad exclaimed, “alright let’s go prove it.”

Kai followed Jackie’s parents as they went outside and onto the driveway. He tried to ignore the evaluating glare he was receiving from Jackie. Worse than that, he could feel the small amount of trust that she had begun to have in them going away.

Outside, her dad marked two lines about 20 meters apart.

“Ok, now if you run this distance five times faster than 8 seconds I will believe that you are an alien and will consider helping you,” her dad said, stepping back to join his wife on the side.

Jackie was standing apart from her parents but was watching closely.

Kai begrudgingly stepped up to one of the lines. He didn’t actually know if he was capable of running that distance under 8 seconds. If he used his abilities he knew he could but he felt Suho warning him not to because of how carefully Jackie’s eyes followed him.

“Go!” her dad yelled, startling Kai out of his thoughts.

He pumped his legs, skidding to a stop to turn around. He ran faster than he had ever run while a human.

He ran past the parents. Her dad stopped the stop watch.

“Seven seconds!” he yelled out to the rest of the family, still caught up in the rush of watching someone run that fast.

“Oh, seven seconds,” he said as reality began to crash in on him.

“Huh,” he said as he looked at his wife.

“I guess we have a lot to talk about then honey,” she said to her husband, patting him on the shoulder.

Kai crouched over, trying to get as much oxygen he could into his body. He might have pushed a little too hard.

“Way to pull it out,” Jackie said, “except for one thing, I could see you the entire time. Didn’t you say that sometimes you run so fast that people can’t see you?”

Kai didn’t have an immediate response to that. Thankfully, he was connected to the combined sassiness of the rest of the Twelve.

“But I had to make sure that you all could still see me, finding that balance is difficult work.”

“Uh huh,” she said not buying it.

She turned and walked back inside following the stunned forms of her parents.

Kai sent his thoughts to the rest of the Twelve. What are we going to do with her? I’m sure that we can keep misleading her. Will we want to since she is the key? Should we take her somewhere and just bring her with us when we head back home?

We’ll try here for now, came the response. Settle in, see what her parents decide at least. If worse comes to worse we can just change their thoughts. Lay needs to rest up a bit first and we need to do some planning to make sure it’s good the first time.

Alright, thought Kai to his team, but when we do it it has to be perfect. We have to change everything and not do any shortcuts. Otherwise she will figure it out. She is a lot more than we were expecting.

How do you mean? Asked Chen.

She thinks differently, she never stops. She has figured out that there is more that we aren’t telling her and she seems determined to figure it out.

When he walked back into the kitchen the parents had made up their mind.

“Yes, you may stay. All of you. But there will be some rules,” Jackie’s mom said.

“Jackie will be the liason between us, she thinks it is better that way. You will not ask us for any money other than for food for the first month. That means that if you stay longer you must have a source of income. You may not break any of our rules or laws. If you decide to go gallivanting off into the universe with our daughter you must at the very least come talk to us about it before hand. And the last thing, which is more of a request than anything else, please don’t be trouble.”

“Yes, Ma’m.” Kai said, a smile spreading over his face. This wasn’t too bad of a situation he told the rest of the twelve.

“Alright, now Jackie has school in the morning but once she gets home we can work out a situation for you all. Right now she needs to do her homework.” With a shooing motion Jackie’s mom sent Jackie to her room.

Once Jackie was out of earshot Jackie’s dad leaned in.

“Alright,” he asked, “how long are you guys really going to be here and what exactly is going on. What do we need to do and how can we help you?”

Suho entered the room with the rest of the Twelve behind him, Kai included.

“We will be here only as long as it takes to repair our ship. The best way you can help is what you have already done, give us a safe place to work from. We will need to find a source of income rather quickly so we may require some assistance in that form,” Suho stated, returning to his place as the rightful leader. “We are known as EXO to you humans or the Twelve if you’d rather. Our names are Suho, Kris, Tao, Sehun, Lay, Luhan, D.O, Kai who you have already met, Chanyeol, Xiumin, Baekhyun, and Chen. These are not our actual names since we have no need for them in our language but they are what you may call us until we change them. Have a good evening Mr. and Mrs. Ryder, get some sleep for tomorrow.”

Suho bid them leave the room, which they did in a confused manner.

Once they had left Suho declared to his team, “welcome home boys, we made it.”

There was a collective sigh of relief and the boys laid out the blankets already in the room Jackie had shown them in a large square. This done, they all piled on top of each other and one by one fell asleep, relaxed in the security of their numbers. Even Suho managed to fall asleep quickly, for some reason he trusted the strange family of the key. The last of the Twelve to fall asleep, Chen, stayed up accompanied by thoughts of the future. Eventually while Chen thought of the various problems they might encounter and what exactly the key should be used for her outer thoughts became too loud for him to ignore. She was frantically thinking about the various symbols and themes of Of Mice and Men by Mr. John Steinbeck. How did the dog relate to Lennie? Was George right to do his final actions? These questions and more flew through her mind as she tried to come up with a workable thesis.