Kyungsoo and Jongin appeared next to Yifan between one breath and the next. He didn’t startle, having expected them to show. “While I commend your skills, Kyungsoo, they were not necessary this time.”

                Ignoring Yifan, Kyungsoo stepped up to the edge of his pit. He glanced down at the two men inside it before looking back at Yifan with a raised brow. “See, I know there wasn’t anyone on the island when we landed here. And it was strange that I wasn’t able to feel you at all yesterday afternoon or throughout the night. You suddenly reappeared with two extra people. Of course, they were necessary.”

                Jongin nodded but otherwise didn’t say anything. He simply moved with Kyungsoo to keep a hand on him while Kyungsoo moved about.

                Yifan shrugged but said nothing to explain the presence of his guests in the pit.

                Sighing, Kyungsoo turned back to them. “How did you come to be on the island?”

                The older of the two boys looked up at him from where he was sitting with his back against the wall. “We were brought here.”

                Kyungsoo shot another look over his shoulder at Yifan. “For what purpose?”

                The older one shrugged.

                Kyungsoo turned back to Yifan with a frown heavily distorting his features. “What did you do?”

                “I could hardly leave them as prisoners,” Yifan said as if it was the logical thing to do and not news to Kyungsoo and Jongin. “Obviously, I had to bring them back with me.”

                “Back from where,” Jongin asked, speaking up for the first time. “Where did you go?”

                “We know where he went,” Kyungsoo bit out. “We voted no but Yifan decided that he was going to do whatever he wanted.”

                “Did you really go to the castle?” Jongin asked quietly. “Did you risk all of us by showing up there?”

                Yifan turned to look at him. The look on Jongin’s face was one of disappointment. It had Yifan swallowing hard. “There was a storm, Jongin. No one knows that I was there. I found Joonmyeon and Tao in the tower where the treasure was supposed to be. Joonmyeon is from Exodus. I couldn’t leave them behind.”

                Jongin shook his head as he looked away from Yifan but said nothing else.

                Kyungsoo sighed as he turned to the two men still in the pit. “What are your intentions if we let you out?”

                The older one looked at the younger one before lifting his gaze to Kyungsoo once more. “I suppose we’ll continue with Yifan to the ship. We should probably set sail and try to get as far away from here as possible. It’ll only be a matter of time before the King starts sending out ships to search for us.”

                Kyungsoo stared down at them before sighing again. He turned back to Yifan as the ground began to move behind him once more. “You’ll be explaining yourself to the others,” he said.

                Yifan dipped his head into a nod and watched as the earth rose until the pit was no more.

                “That really is a strange sensation,” one of the new guys said.

                “Agreed,” the older one muttered as he got to his feet.

                Kyungsoo looked at them one last time before he squeezed Jongin’s hand and teleported away.

XXX

                Yixing crossed his arms as he stared at the tree line that Kyungsoo indicated that Yifan and his guests would be walking out of eventually. While he waited for them, Yixing thought of all the words he wanted to have with Yifan. There were so many. Ranging from stupid to utter idiot. He felt quite creative as he stood on the beach and thought up more insults.

                By the time an unknown figure came rushing out of the trees chasing what appeared to be a small cat, Yixing had properly worked himself up into a mood.

                Then one of the most beautiful men he’d ever seen came strolling out of the woods after the first. And that was saying something considering the beautiful people that Yixing spent all his time around. He was smiling and looked happy despite having been put into a pit and more than likely kidnapped from his home.

                A lot of the anger – not all of it – disappeared as Yixing watched the two strangers coo over the cat before noticing him and some of the others waiting for them. They glanced back over their shoulders at the trees but shrugged at each other when they didn’t notice Yifan.

                Yixing would have called them over if he thought he could have worked enough saliva into his mouth to say anything at all. Luckily, they decided to cross the beach on their own.

                Unluckily, the beautiful man only got more and more pretty the closer he got.

                Yixing shifted as he cleared his throat. He reminded himself that he had to be stern and make sure that the two newcomers were a threat to their way of life. He could not get distracted.

                An elbow hit his side as the two men stopped a couple of feet away from him. “Hello,” Yixing bit out quickly after being prompted. “I’m Yixing, who are you?”

                “Joonmyeon,” Joonmyeon said with a smile. “And this is Tao and Tao’s kitten ZiZi.”

                Yixing nodded as he met Joonmyeon’s gaze. He felt the corners of his mouth tilting up into a smile but forced his face to stay neutral as someone behind him cleared their throat. “Kyungsoo told us that Yifan said that you’re from Exodus.”

                It wasn’t a question but Joonmyeon nodded while he smiled. “I am. I can connect with water. Yifan rescued us from a tower after he found out.”

                “And Tao?” Yixing asked as he shifted his gaze from Joonmyeon to Tao. “What can you do?”

                “Uh,” Tao said. He shrunk back a bit behind Joonmyeon as everyone turned to look at him. “I can’t, uh-“

                “His powers are his own business,” Joonmyeon said with another charming smile. “He doesn’t have control over them just yet.”

                “Don’t worry,” Yixing said as he smiled and looked back at Tao. “It isn’t anything to be ashamed of. Jongin keeps almost constant contact with Kyungsoo because he can’t always stay in control of his ability to teleport and Kyungsoo grounds him.”

                “Are we just automatically trusting them now, Yixing?” A voice cut in from behind.

                Yixing sighed as he turned back to look at Chen. “I don’t trust them,” he said. “But earning trust has to work both ways. Why should Joonmyeon and Tao, who were probably kidnapped by Yifan, who still hasn’t shown his despicable face, not be shown some trust? I’m sure they weren’t expecting to be here anymore than we were expecting them to be here.”

                “You’re not wrong,” Joonmyeon said with a sigh. “We thought we’d be trapped in the tower by the King for the rest of our lives. Yifan showing up during a terrible storm to knock at the window was not something we’d been expecting.”

                “Joonmyeon even tried to kick him out when he was being mean to us,” Tao said as he crowded a little closer to Joonmyeon’s back. “But I think Joonmyeon using his powers to blast Yifan out of the tower only made him more determined to take us with him since he broke through the roof.”

                Yixing sighed as he turned his eyes toward the sky. He took a second to center himself before he looked back down at Joonmyeon and Tao. “You were prisoners of the King?”

                “Yes,” Joonmyeon said without further explanation.

                “And he’ll notice you’re missing pretty quickly?”

                “The storm was a bad one. It probably lasted throughout the night and into this morning, but I’m sure he’s sent someone to check on us by now.”

                “And how important are you to the King?”

                Joonmyeon glanced over his shoulder at Tao for a moment before turning back to meet Yixing’s gaze once more. “He will be furious, and he will search for us.”

                Yixing turned to look at the others that were on the beach with him. Chen shook his head but the look on his face showed that he wasn’t angry with their guests. Minseok and Baekhyun were angrily staring at the trees rather than Joonmyeon and Tao.

                “Right,” Yixing said as he clapped his hands and turned back to Joonmyeon and Tao. “What did Yifan tell you was going to happen?”

                Joonmyeon shifted on the sand as he looked out over the ocean. “He just said that he’d get us out of the tower and that we’d be free to leave whenever we wanted. I made a point to say when we agreed to go with him that we were not prisoners and I’ll make that same point now. Tao and I will leave if we want to.”

                “Okay,” Yixing said while trying to bite back a smile. He couldn’t deny that he liked how firm Joonmyeon could be. “Are you willing to set sail with us? If the King is going to search for you like you said then we should really put more distance between us and him.”

                “We should also avoid any heavily populated areas for quite some time,” Joonmyeon added as he nodded and took another step forward. “He has a network of spies that is quite extensive. He would brag about it all the time while taunting us that we’d never escape.”

                “Well,” Yixing said as he turned and gestured for Joonmyeon and Tao to follow him toward the little camp they’d made on the beach. “I do enjoy every bit of angst we can give that man. How about we start breaking up camp and head back to the ship? We can set sail as soon as we’re ready.”

                “What about Yifan?” Tao asked as he rubbed his fingers against the top of the sleeping kitten’s head. “I don’t know where he went.”

                “When he’s done being a coward,” Yixing said loudly. “He can join us on the ship.”

                Tao snickered as he followed Joonmyeon and the others over to the camp.

XXX

                Joonmyeon watched the way they interacted with each other. It was clear to him that each of the men present was from Exodus, though he hadn’t been able to discern what some of their abilities were. He knew Kyungsoo could control the earth and that Jongin could teleport. Yifan could fly and the tall one he thought someone called Chanyeol controlled fire.

                The rest were either not willing to show what they could do or they simply didn’t need to use their powers to complete their tasks. On the one hand, he was curious to know about them. On the other, he really didn’t want to know. If he didn’t have the information then he could never be tempted to trade it away if he and Tao were captured once more.

                Shaking himself from those thoughts, Joonmyeon helped Yixing lift a crate of different types of food. They carried it to the rowboat where Baekhyun and Chen took it from them to store it away. “Are we going to be too much of a burden on your supplies?”

                Yixing huffed as he turned to look back at the camp. “I doubt it. We have quite a bit on the ship and it isn’t that hard for Jongin and Kyungsoo to pop into a port to get something if we truly need it. We spend a lot of time foraging on islands like this one.”

                “Makes sense,” Joonmyeon said as he watched Tao show off his kitten to some of the others. “What’s the hardest thing for you guys to get?”

                “Honestly,” Yixing said slowly as he thought about it. “Probably freshwater. We don’t come across springs very often so we mostly have to rely on the rain.”

                “I can help with that,” Joonmyeon said with a grin. He held his hand out and waited for a bit of water to fly into his palm from the ocean. He twirled the ball through the air until all the salt was condensed in the middle. He let the salt fall out into his hand while he kept the ball of freshwater hovering in the air. “The salt isn’t really good for anything but I can keep the water clean.”

                Yixing blinked a few times as he stared at the ball of water floating in front of him. “That is so handy. You could solve a lot of our problems during the time you’re with us. You have such good control over your ability.”

                Joonmyeon shrugged as he tossed the ball of water so it smacked into Tao’s back. He snickered as Tao yelped and turned to glare at him. “We had a lot of time while trapped in that tower. I practiced a lot to be able to do things more easily.”

                “But not Tao?”

                The question was supposed to be innocent. Joonmyeon forced himself to stay relaxed so he wouldn’t give away his discomfort at Yixing bringing up Tao’s powers. “He doesn’t have the type of ability that is easy to practice with while trapped in a tiny tower with another person always in your space.”

                Yixing hummed as he nodded his head. He smiled over his shoulder at Joonmyeon before he started back toward the little camp to help Luhan load something else into a crate.

                Joonmyeon watched him go as Tao joined him at his side. “Are you making friends?”

                “Did you have to splash me like that? I almost got gored by ZiZi.”

                Joonmyeon grinned at the complaint. He was more than happy to listen to Tao complain about his teasing rather than being trapped in the tower. “Are you ready to see what sailing is like?”

                “Sehun said that he really enjoys it because the wind always feels awesome,” Tao said as he looked out at the ship they were preparing to row out to. “I think it’ll be an interesting experience.”

                Joonmyeon was just glad that it was an experience that Tao got to have. “We’ll see if you think that when we’ve been out at sea for a few days and there is no land in sight.”

                Tao shrugged as he looked back at Joonmyeon and grinned. “I just hope ZiZi behaves. I don’t want him to scratch everything up and make everyone mad.”

                “He’ll be good,” Joonmyeon assured him. “I think we’re going to start loading people into the rowboat soon. Are you ready?”
                Tao looked back at the island before grinning at Joonmyeon once more. “I’m excited to go anywhere as long as it isn’t back to the tower. I dreamed of having adventures like this but I never thought I’d actually get to go on one. You’ll be with me the whole time, right?”

                Joonmyeon tugged Tao to his side in a hug. “No one can keep us apart.”

A/N: Everyone needs pirate EXO in their lives. I enjoy this story too much, I think.

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