ENDOPLANET

It took Chen a very long time to cool his anger.  He was so furious that he locked himself away in one of the private mage rooms for those with dangerous ebb powers and stayed there a whole two days, somewhere in a torpor between wakefulness and sleep as he watched lightning dancing across his fingertips.  It was hunger that drove him out partway through the third day in search of a large, vegetarian meal.  There was no way he could eat meat after the field marshal had unsettled him enough to be able to taste the smoky smell of charred flesh at the back of his throat once again.  Vivid memories were awful things.

He spent that night wandering around the halls of the school in pitch black, unwilling to sleep in case nightmares returned.  He wasn’t sure which he dreaded more: the one about getting lost in the maze or the one about the destruction of his hometown.

Just thinking about the latter had him envisioning the tall flames and the screams, and his terror as the lightning continued to crackle, and the observer with the third eye watching from a nearby rooftop that remained untouched.

Moments later, he would be back in the maze, countless horrors closing in on him as he desperately begged the mysterious girl to help him.  She never did.

It wasn’t until the fourth day, when he finally felt like reconnecting with humanity, that he realised Xiumin was missing.

Some of the biggest snowflakes Chen had ever seen in his life were falling as he hurried through one of the courtyards, arms tucked under his armpits as he shivered, cursing himself for not bringing a coat.  Xiumin had rubbed off on him a bit too much: his friend reacted to snow the same way most people would do to a scorching summer day, and was often out in sandals, shorts and t-shirt when there were several inches of the stuff.

Given the sheer amount of snow he was struggling through, Chen wondered if there was actually any cause to be worried.  Sure, Xiumin hadn’t been in his room, and like Chen he’d skipped most of his classes that day, and there was always the possibility he’d done something dumb and used his powers on ebb and landed up in the infirmary, or even that he was just sunbathing or snowbathing or whatever the equivalent was.

Still… Xiumin hadn’t left a message.  Though that could have been because Chen was being antisocial and had shut himself away from the world.

After a long search, he found himself in the sickbay, watching as Lay fussed around Silva’s plant pot.  Three orange monarch butterflies fluttered around the immobile, upright girl, apparently undisturbed by Lay’s ministrations, though what on earth the medic was doing was beyond Chen.  He just seemed to be waving his hands at the plant.

One of the butterflies landed on Lay’s finger and he attempted to shoo it away.  It hovered by Lay’s head for a second before going to perch on Silva’s nose.  Chen raised an eyebrow.  Was it just him, or had a butterfly been displaying attitude?

A voice distracted him from the odd display.

“Hey, lightning kid.”

He turned to see one of the people he’d rescued sitting up in bed.  Was it… V or something?  Taehyung?  The one who had met The Stag, at any rate, whoever The Stag was.

“What?” Chen demanded tetchily.

Taehyung looked him up and down.  Chen eyed him, unimpressed that he was being judged when Taehyung himself looked paler than a ghost and like he could do with an extra year’s sleep.

“You look like sh*t,” Taehyung told him.  “But thanks.”

It left Chen very, very confused.  “For what?”

“For bringing us in from the cold.”

Chen stared at him.  “Did you just make a very, very bad spy pun?”

Taehyung snickered, apparently pleased with himself.  Behind Chen, Lay started talking to somebody, and then there was a loud thump and the entire room shook.  Unamused, Chen turned to glare, only to be met by a swarm of orange monarchs as Lay yelled for Kris.  He decided that Lay must have messed something up, or Silva’s tree capabilities were somehow tied to nature and she’d spawned an entire generation of butterflies.  He didn’t remember seeing cocoons, though.

“By the way,” said Taehyung, pulling his attention back again.  Grimacing, Chen turned back to face him.  “There are rumours you sent the field marshal packing.”

Chen sighed.  That had been all literally every person he’d bumped into had wanted to talk about.  Apparently Field Marshal Jaejoong had left in a high dudgeon after Jongdae had refused his offer to join the Guardians.  Everybody also thought that Chen was an idiot for not accepting.  Those who didn’t have magic considered it a lost opportunity to send a mage they were scared of packing, and those who did blamed him for having no pride or sense of duty to the country.  Chen wondered how they would have reacted to being told to hold the line and quite possibly die for a whole different world that didn’t even know they existed.  It left a bitter taste in his mouth even now.

Taehyung leant forwards.  “I heard,” he said in a low voice, eyes darting around the room (Chen couldn’t help copying him, but it was only the comatose Silva there now, since Lay had vanished elsewhere), “you killed him.  Couldn’t control your anger.  Lightning bolt straight to the heart.”

For a few moments, Chen looked at him in confusion.  Then he snorted.

“Has Lay been feeding you patients weird things again?”

Taehyung’s mouth quirked, but something about his expression was a bit too serious and lucid for him to be experiencing the side effects of some home-made medicinal drugs.

“I’m just sleeping off trauma and regaining strength,” he said before lowering his voice even further.  “Kris was saying it.  I overheard him and Lay discussing it while you quarantined yourself away.  They thought I was knocked out.”

Chen scrutinised him again, wondering where on earth this was coming from.  “But the field marshal’s alive.”

Taehyung held up his hands.  “Apparently so.  But your medic and school director are getting a bit worried about…”  He gestured in Chen’s general direction.  “Apparently your control’s been getting a bit loose.  Kris says he’s worried about you losing everything to your anger, or rage-quitting again like you just have done for the past few days.”

A sharp retort that everything was perfectly in control nearly burst from Chen’s lips, but he stopped himself.  The one thing he lacked right now was control, and it was terrifying.  Control was part of why he’d turned Jaejoong down.  Did they think he was dangerously unstable?

“Why are you telling me this?” Chen asked him.

“Because you won’t listen,” Taehyung said patiently.  “In war, you muck in or somebody else has to do it for you.  If you’re the first choice and you refuse, whoever steps up is unlikely to fill the shoes you would have left for a while, if at all.”

Chen did not like the way this conversation was going.  It made him uneasy, and he wasn’t sure if that was because a suspicion was beginning to niggle in the back of his mind, or because Taehyung was talking with the wisdom of a grandparent when Chen was pretty sure that the spy was younger than him.

“That’s what they told us when they drafted us into the intelligence service, anyway,” Taehyung said, slumping back against his pillows.  Chen couldn’t believe that was just it.

“What are you suggesting?” he asked.

Taehyung raised an eyebrow, as if asking if Chen really needed him to spell it out, but at that point, it twigged.

Choice.  Jaejoong had told him he had no choice, too.  That he’d join sooner or later whether he liked it or not.  And if Chen hadn’t joined…

He blanched.

Somehow, they’d persuaded Xiumin to take up the position Chen hadn’t wanted to.  It wasn’t that Xiumin wasn’t capable, but his frost powers weren’t trained aggressively and most people knew that Chen would do anything to protect his friend.  Besides, Chen didn’t really know what he’d do without Xiumin.  They always did things together.  Always.

“They’ve sent Xiumin out?” he asked weakly.

Taehyung nodded.  “’Fraid so.  Don’t do anything stupid.”

But Chen was already halfway out of the room.  “Where’s Kris?”

EXOPLANET

The princess had taken so strongly to the D.O. that Sehun was beginning to wonder if she’d developed a crush.

“Can we go see—?”

“No,” he responded automatically for the thirty-seventh time that day, trying to ignore the nervous energy that Gaia was passing onto her horse as they rode around the perimeter of the palace grounds.

“But Sehun!” the princess whined.  “I promised!”

“I think you’ll find you actually didn’t, your highness.”

“But I’m his only friend!”

“He will have made new ones, your highness.  That’s sort of what happens at schools.”

“Can I go to school, then?”  Gaia pulled out a pair of puppy eyes that made Sehun curse internally.  This was just unfair.  “I don’t have many friends.”

“Your highness—”

The puppy eyes turned into a pout and a very disappointed frown.  Sehun actually winced at the look of betrayal she shot him.

“I don’t have any friends.”