Chen wrapped his hand around Kai’s throat. The urge to rip it from Kai’s body was strong. His arm burned with the desire to do so, but that wouldn’t satisfy his anger. A storm raged in his inner world, spewing torrents of rain and volts of lightning. He took a breath and stared in the fearful eyes of Kai. His hand twitched causing Kai to struggle. His hands went up to his throat and tugged futilely at Chen’s iron grip. Chen realized that if he just continued as was Kai would die. It was as simple as that: wait. Then, the  puffing breathes and low grunts would stop - a passive death.

“Stop. . . please. . .” Kai desperately cried out, tears lined the rim of his eyes. The strength in Kai’s fingers slackened.

Chen grew angier, not at Kai, but at the unbearable frailness in his eyes. A god shouldn’t look like this, so frail and breakable. Long ago, in the pantheons of old, deities were terrifying monsoons, furious tempests, deadly whirlwinds. Once they could rage without fear - they were invincible, powerful, great. When they clashed they were personification of disaster. Now, they were nothing. . . .

Chen’s internal storm thundered. Humanity had reduced them to this pitiful state; they went from deities to scavengers. His hatred of humans lit up the dark clouds of his inner world, giving rise to a fiercer thunder and a fiercer lightning. His irritation at the weakness in Kai’s eyes amplified. Kai’s fingers clawed weakly at his tense hands.

“Stop, Chen,” Xiumin ordered.

The black-haired man angled his head to watch his elder who appeared from around the corner. His fingers relaxed but did not yield. His eyes glowed like a wrathful lightning.

Xiumin repeated evenly, “Stop.”

Chen closed his eyes and took a breath. A long second later, his fingers released themselves from Kai’s throat. Kai promptly crumbled onto the floor, gasping for air. He looked more like a beast than a sentient being as his body shook. His bleach blond hair clung to his forehead. Sweat soaked his clothes. He looked so frail, so small, like a newborn deer that escaped a pursuing wolf.

Xiumin paused, watching Kai carefully. His eyes observed the dilated pupils with sympathy. When he looked up, he saw Chen staring with a complex expression. Chen’s lips were pressed into a thin line and his eyes were a mixture of irritation, horror, and mild concern. Chen  gripped his bicep roughly.

Chen stepped back as Xiumin walked closer. Chen turned sharply to face Xiumin. For a prolonged moment, the two stared into each other’s eyes. Then, a spark lit up Chen’s gaze.

“You ordered him to do this, didn’t you?” Chen growled.

Xiumin nodded. If he had lied, Xiumin would be feeding fuel into the fire. Honesty is like water, a wave of calm. His reaction barely delayed Chen’s fury.

Chen roared, “What right do you have? You can’t forced me to like humans.”

Xiumin blinked. As he thought, Xiumin noted that Chen’s upper arm was marred with reddish imprints.

As politely as he could, Xiumin responded, “How can you hate them when you never gave them a chance in the first place? One experience; however negative the experience was, should not  guide your opinion for the group as a whole.”

Xiumin could see the figurative tempest inside of Chen’s head: the booming thunder and shattering rain divided by intervals of ferocious lightning. Once more Chen touched his bicep as if a phantom pain had flared up. Chen’s expression darkened as he recalled an unpleasant event.

“Well, the opposite is true! Humanity isn’t representative of its parts,” Chen remarked sharply.

Before Xiumin could response, Chen spat, “How does it benefit you to protect them? You cannot create unless I destroy.”

Xiumin took a breath; there was so much to say. Xiumin did create, even if it was within the limits of past creations. It was akin to adding details to a partly sculpted frieze of the world except this structure was indefinite. It was more a challenge than a limitation. That was not what Chen was looking for Xiumin knew.  He also knew that his response would never satisfy Chen. Their outlooks on life were too radically different.

“I protect them because they need protection,” Xiumin remarked simply. “Also, not every invention is the aftermath of ruination.”

Chen barked, “Look what they have done to the Earth -”, he spread his arms outward, “what they have done to us. What am I if -”

Abruptly, he paused. Glaring at Xiumin, Chen slammed his fist against thigh. Xiumin had refused to fuel Chen’s fire so perhaps that had encouraged Chen to stop. Although Xiumin was fairly sure frustration had led Chen to storm off, he hoped it had been inspired by the former.

Watching Chen’s retreating figure, Xiumin frowned. He was suddenly struck by how young Chen was.  The process from conception (in the minds of humans) to a physical form was gradual; many never made it to that point. Chen had been one of the last of their pantheon to form a corporeal body although he had been one of the first to be conceived.  Despite appearing to be a twenty-one year old male, Chen had only recently gained a body, approximately two years ago.

Two years of life, Xiumin reflected, was very short. Every experience would be more vivid, more charged without a past to compare it too. Life would be a raw - an endless windstorm of stimulation.

Xiumin had been worn down in these past hundred years, rarely did anything surprise him now. He had not felt as strongly as Chen had in eons. If there was only a way for him to replace Chen’s negative experiences with shocking, brilliantly positive ones. Altering the flow of time was too risky, there was just too much room for mistakes when one was not use to molding it. He would have to find a better, more subtle  method to facilitate more positive interactions between Chen and his environment with Chen’s youth in mind.

Chen more jogged than walked. Xiumin was perhaps the most irritating presence in his world other than the billions of humans in existence. The thought of Xiumin and of people boiled his blood. He broke into a brisk jog. He wanted quiet, somewhere that he could hear his thoughts without interruption. The park should be blissfully empty without Kai’s influence.

It was. Chen settled into a patch of dry grass and watched the setting sun. His body was still tense from the emotion storm that had thundered through his system. Reaching his arms toward the sky and leaning back, he attempted to stretch the tension away. Dropping into the rough patch, Chen felt heavy. It was as if all the precipitation from his emotional thunderstorm had sunk into his bones. His mind still buzzed with the thunder of his anger. As he laid, the argument ran through his head. His fists clenched and he felt his upper arm throb.

Xiumin was extremely idealistic, Chen thought. There can’t be creation without destruction anymore then there can lightning without thunder. One always signaled the arrival of the other.  To act as if lightning could exist independent thunder  is to deny the existence of thunder.

Chen sat up, running his fingers through his hair. His mind refused to rest. It formed new responses to Xiumin’s colorful words on humanity. It wasn’t Xiumin’s place to criticize his approach (or lack of thereforth) to humans.  

Tapping his fingers against the damp earth, Chen stood up. As the sun settled behind the horizon, the streets lit up. A few uneasy groups rushed through the park, clenching their bags as potential weapons. Cars rumbled from work and towards home in one long, noisy, honking march.

Chen's quiet atmosphere was interrupted.  He was tempted to destroy the source of his annoyance, but that would only cause more noise to form and waste precious energy. There was no way a lethargic Chen could deal with panicking humans. Pushing off from the ground, Chen headed towards the tranquility of the  Minute Cafe. Maybe the walk would quiet the Xiumin’s voice in his mind. At the very least, the shop was a haven from humanity.

“What happened to Kai?” Suho inquired. There was no response.

He walked around Xiumin, hesitantly reaching out to touch him. Xiumin didn’t response. He was still as a board; Suho observed the wind whipping around Xiumin. It was like watching the eye of a storm - there was a sense of perpetual calm.  

“Hyung,” Suho called out again, vainly.

When Xiumin was thinking, as he was now, it was difficult to pull him out of it. Suho and Xiumin might as well be orbiting different planets. He would have left, but Kai had left a strong impression on him.

Last that he had seen Kai, he was in a bad condition. He was shaky and pale; he clung to the roulette table as if it was sustaining his life. From the tinge of color returning to Kai, it seems that it actually was reviving him. Sehun had left the table as Suho had arrived; Kai asked Suho for help.

Instead of delivering the news himself, he had asked Suho to pass the news on. It was a strange game of telephone as Kai had received information from Sehun who had received information from elsewhere.  Since he wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon, Suho pulled out his iphone 5 and started up a game of Candy Crush.

It would be three games of Candy Crush, four canceled appointments, ten failed attempts of piano tiles, and several other apps later that Suho would be able to relay the message of “Two emerged from underground.”. He also delivered the flash drive filled with what Suho assumed to be locations and names, but technology wasn’t his strong suit.

When Chen had arrived at Minute, the few individuals in the store had moved farther away. The walk had barely lightened his internal storm clouds. Chen walked up to the counter and placed himself firmly down.

“The usual,” Sungmin asked.

Chen nodded, and then changed his mind, “Add a shot of espresso.”

If his mind was going to spin up a tornado, he would force his body to keep up with it. As he waited, his gaze wandered through Sungmin’s displays.

There were several picture frames with male figures of various heights and stature. Letters were inscribed into the frames: LT, ZM, DH, and such. It wasn’t until he noted an “SM” under an image of Sungmin that he realized that they were initials. The newest frame was void of these marks. The roughly fourteen men from the previous photos were dressed in simple black, etched into the frame was the year 2008. Every image after that one similarly had a year inscribed into it 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013. With each consecutive year, the photo became emptier and the expressions of each man more somber.

“Here,” Sungmin placed the steaming drink in front of Chen.

Chen took a sip and allowed the caffeine to wake up his heavy limbs. The sparks of energy jumped from appendage to appendage. His fingers tapped against the countertop as his mind continued to recap his argument with Xiumin. It stood up against his mind, zips of color running through red emotional landscape of his mind.  

“Did you have a bad day?” Sungmin inquired softly. The older man was once more polishing his glassware.

Chen stared. His mind still trapped in Xiumin’s words. . . . During their argument, Xiumin’s philosophical nature must’ve rubbed off on him or Chen would’ve ignored Sungmin’s attempt at a conversation.

“What would you call thunder if wasn’t followed by lightning?” Chen asked. A second later, he realized how strange that question was. It’s something that a drunk person ponders at the peak of their intoxication or a sleep deprived individual asks at two in the morning.

Sungmin responded just as seriously, “Then, it’ll just be pointless noise.”

“Pointless noise?” Chen parroted as the bruise on his arm pulsed.

Sungmin nodded, “Thunder precedes lightning. It warns of lightning. If lightning stops coming, then it becomes an empty threat.”

An empty threat, Chen thought. Consuming more of his coffee, Chen thought of the frustrating and lonely nature of being  empty thunder. For a moment, he heard humanity mocking him.  

“That would be sad, to be pointless noise,” Sungmin remarked, “wouldn’t it?”

Chen shoved his cup across the polished wood, and muttered, “What’s the point in that?”

He wasn’t quite sure it he was responding to Sungmin or to the idea of lightning-less thunder. That was what made Xiumin as irksome as humans. Xiumin left behind philosophical babbling, while humans filled his ears with useless chattering.

A/N: Since Chen asked Sungmin, I'll ask you, "What would you call thunder if it wasn' followed by lightning?" I hope guys enjoyed this chapter. Criticisms and commments are appreciated.