“We’re back!” X announced, once everyone had gathered at the meeting room of the goddesses. “It’s time for your first trial and Y, who is the creator of the trial, will explain more about it.” X stated before sitting back down on Sooyoung’s throne.

Upon the completion of X’s introduction, Y stood up from Tiffany’s throne and started the briefing: “This trial tests the ability of a group to swiftly achieve an objective in do or die situations. To be more specific, it is a rescue mission and for the benefit of those who are severely lacking in observational skills… Sunny, Sooyoung and Jessica have been kidnapped and if they are to return alive, someone has got to go rescue them. Only three people are allowed to go on the rescue, so who will it be?”

Gasps of shock and disbelief were heard when those present realised that three of their group were missing. The strange thing was that Taeyeon actually smirked and her face had no hint of worry despite the fact that her wife and her mentor were kidnapped. Tiffany, however, seemed to be crying non-stop. Seohyun shook her head and said: “Seriously? No one realised that when X was talking, there was a momentary increase in air temperature when the three of them were engulfed by black flames?”

Sooyoung’s children looked at each other and then at Y, their eyes ablaze with determination. “The three of us will go rescue our umma, Jessica noona and my Sunny noona.” Sungmin told Y. He was immediately greeted by a death glare from Taeyeon and he corrected himself: “I mean Sunny noona…”

“Once you leave this room walk north and the three of you will reach a desert. You’ll have to cross it, scale a mountain and descend down the other side, before crossing a patch of artic tundra to reach the tower where I have imprisoned your loved ones. Also, along the way there will be three guardian animals waiting to prevent you from achieving your objective and they will kill if necessary. And yes, you three can be killed during the trial and if you die, your death will be permanent. There is a time limit of eight hours and if you fail to reach the tower by then… I’ll have them for dinner! MUHAHAHA” Y informed the three boys and ended her briefing with an outburst of evil laughter.

The boys’ faces turned pale when they realised the severity of failing the trial and that just made Y happier. “I’ll start with Jessica, she looks sooo tasty~” Y added on. Once Tiffany heard that, she passed out, while Onew face turned completely white. “X and Z will stay here to make sure no one else interferes, while I’ll see you three at the tower… Hopefully… Ciao!” Y sniggered and disappeared in a pillar of black flames.

“Let’s go!” Sungmin urged and in no time, the three boys were out of the door and sprinting towards the north. Jo Kwon, who could control the winds to lift him off the ground, flew ahead to scout out the terrain, while the other two followed his lead on foot. Before long, they had reached the desert and were greeted by a raging sandstorm.

The tiny particles of sand and rock that were flying around at high speeds mercilessly sliced at any area of exposed skin, but any cuts sustained by the boys were quickly healed thanks to the Melodious Cannon’s innate power. Nevertheless, their vision was greatly obscured.

“Is it me or is the ground rumbling?” Jo Kwon asked his brothers, but before anyone could reply, something burst out of the ground behind them and three of its legs came crashing down at the spots where the three brothers were just a split second ago. They had to thank Jo Kwon’s quick reflexes to generate a gust of wind to blow them away from the danger zone.

“Oh my umma… That’s a gigantic tarantula!!! And the runes on its body… It’s practically impossible to pierce through its carapace.” Sungmin shouted over the strong winds to inform his dongsaengs.

And just when they thought thing could get any worse, Onew yelled: “HELP!!! I think I’m sinking into quicksand!!!” Jo Kwon who was nearer to Onew, immediately flew towards Onew, but the four metre tall tarantula jumped in front of Jo Kwon, not allowing Jo Kwon to save Onew. Sungmin, who sensed changes in the position of the other three souls, quickly made his way towards them as fast as he could.

“Crap... I can hardly sense Onew’s soul anymore…” Sungmin shouted as Jo Kwon and he tried to get past the huge spider to no avail.

“We can’t just give up!!!” Jo Kwon yelled back as he lunged himself at the tarantula again. Sungmin nodded and closed his eyes for a second. When he reopened his eyes, his pupils had turned crimson red.

“Sacrificial Exchange.” Sungmin whispered as he made eye contact with his arachnid adversary. At once, the tarantula and Onew both dissipated into black winds which moved half a circle in a clockwise manner before materialising back into Onew and the tarantula, with their positions reversed. Onew, who was on the brink of death, spat out the sand in his mouth and he recovered rapidly thanks to his own innate power.

“Is the tarantula dead?” Onew asked his hyungs. His hyungs never needed answer his question, for at that precise moment; the tarantula burst out from the quicksand pit and landed on normal ground. It then let out a deafening screech that caused the ground to shake violently.

“Here comes trouble… The spider just called all its baby spiders!!!” Jo Kwon exclaimed in shock as he saw countless baby spiders climb out from the ground and surround the three boys. Suddenly, the baby spiders changed direction and swarmed towards their mother, instead. “Whoa?!! What just happened?” Jo Kwon asked in confusion.

“I put them on an illusion that we were standing over there.” Onew replied, pointing towards where the mother tarantula was. “So what’s the plan now? My illusion won’t last thatlong…” Onew asked nervously as he tried to maintain the illusion.

“Eureka!!! I got it!” Jo Kwon exclaimed abruptly and he immediately manipulated the winds around the spiders to form a vortex that out all the air from the area. Onew released the spiders from his illusion, but without air, the spiders were unable to attack the boys as they were slowly suffocation and within minutes all of the baby spiders and their mother died of asphyxiation.

“Not bad… You three defeated that scary spider… But time’s ticking… seven and a half hours to go and a huge distance to travel.” Y’s voice echoed around them. Gritting their teeth, the three boys forged on and reached the base of the mountain half an hour later.

Back at the goddesses’ meeting room, the group were watching the boys’ progress through X’s crystal ball. Seeing the boys’ success against the first enemy, X and Z simply sniggered. Taeyeon and Seohyun just smiled, Tiffany glared defiantly at X and Z, while the rest of the group cheered for the success.

About an hour later…

The three boys had just managed to climb up to a small plateau, halfway up the mountain and they decided to take a small break there as they were exhausted from climbing. In Jo Kwon’s case, he was tired from controlling the winds to lift him higher into the air and from controlling the winds to catch his brothers on the several occasions that they had accidentally slipped.

Unfortunately, no sooner than when they decided to take a break, an ear-piercing screech was heard and an enormous eagle appeared over the top of the mountain. It screech another time and flapped its huge wings at the three boys, generating a huge gust of wind that blew them off the plateau. The gust of wind also sent rocks and boulders hurtling down the slope after them.

Sungmin with his scythe arm managed to stop his descent by jamming his scythe arm into a crevice in the slope. He also managed to catch hold of Onew as Onew fell past him, while Jo Kwon gathered the winds to keep him aloft. Jo Kwon also succeeded in blowing the onslaught of boulders and rocks away.

Just then, the eagle screeched again and started breathing fire, sending a stream of flames right at Sungmin and Onew. This forced Jo Kwon to control the winds to blow against the flames to prevent them from roasting his brothers. “I don’t think I can hold out much longer… I’m running out of energy soon…This trick better work.” Jo Kwon thought as he created a vortex of air around the stream of flames to out the air from the area. No air meant no oxygen and no oxygen meant no fire. However, the eagle could control winds too and simply dissipated the vortex.

By that time, Sungmin and Onew had managed to get out of range of the fire stream, however, Jo Kwon was completely exhausted and was unable to hold out anymore…

“HYUNG!!!” Onew shouted as he saw the flames engulf his hyung.

“Onew look up there.” Sungmin whispered to Onew and pointed to a figure above the eagle. As Onew looked, the figure sliced the eagle’s head of with his chainsaw arm and with a final screech of surprise, the eagle breathed its last, its corpse tumbled down the mountain side.

Following, the figure landed next to Sungmin and Onew and told them: “Phew… Lucky that worked… I’m out of energy.”

“Jo Kwon, how did you do that???” Sungmin asked.

“Ahh… About that… I created a wind clone to hold off the flames, while I circled to the other side of the mountain before ascending to the top and ambushing the eagle from the back. Thankfully, the eagle never realised it was wind clone, or the plan would not have worked.” An exhausted Jo Kwon replied.

“Wow, daebak. Hyung is jjang!” Onew exclaimed in awe. Jo Kwon grinned and after resting for a while, the three brothers continued scaling the mountain. They took about another two hours and thirty minutes to finally reach the base of the mountain on the opposite side, before they forged on through the tundra towards the tower, which was still a speck on the horizon.

“Great job defeating the eagle… But there are only two hours left and one more enemy, huge mass of tundra and a tall tower to go through…” Y’s voice echoed around them for the second time.

Hearing Y’s words, the boys decided pick up their pace to reach the tower as fast as possible. As they closed in on the tower, about an hour later, they saw a menacing polar bear guarding the tower’s entrance…

The polar bear let out a majestic roar, reared up on its back feet and slammed its front feet back down on the ground. This caused the ground beneath the three boys to form up into sharp ice crystals that would have pierced right through them if they had not jumped out of the way just in the nick of time, after recovering from the initial shock from the bear’s roar.

The polar bear roared again and this time, lightning struck down from the heavens and enveloped the bear with a suit of lightning armour. Sparks threatened to arc into the air and towards the boys, so they kept their distance, as they tried to formulate a plan. Onew, who had a ranged weapon, continued firing shots at the polar bear, to prevent it from getting too close. The attacks had no visible effect on the bear, much to the dismay of the brothers.

“We can’t get close to the bear or we’ll get electrocuted.” Jo Kwon stated, cursing under his breath. Then, an idea struck him and he told his brothers: “Onew, use Lullaby on the bear to make it fall asleep. I will follow up with Revenge of the Dead.” Onew nodded and once his two brothers put on their ear plugs, Onew yelled the word “Lullaby” and fired a shot into the air. In a matter of seconds, the polar bear fell asleep and Jo Kwon unleashed Revenge of the Dead.

The vengeful skeletons had no ears so they were not affected by Onew’s Lullaby, but once there got into striking range of their target, sparks arched from the lightning armour to them, completely obliterating any traces of their existence. Seeing this, Onew and Jo Kwon tried the using the same method he used to kill the tarantula on the polar bear.

No air meant no sound, so the polar bear woke up and even though it was trapped under Onew’s illusion, it easily broke out of the illusion and simply dashed through the vortex, escaping its imminent death. Now, the brothers had to face an extremely angered and powerful polar bear, which was far from ideal considering that had almost no time left…

Onew unleashed Crescendo, once his brothers were a safe distance away, and it managed to stop the angered polar bear in its tracks momentarily. It roared in pain from Onew’s attack. The roar negated the effects of Onew’s attack and Onew himself even had to cover his ears to protect himself from the counterattack.

Sungmin, followed up with Endless Sorrow, once the other two were out of range. “What?!! That bear can’t feel sorrow!!! We are in deep trouble…” Sungmin sighed in despair, as he was rejoined by his dongsaengs.

“How I wish this was just an illusion…” Jo Kwon muttered.

“Wait a second… This IS an illusion!!!” Onew suddenly shouted and immediately broke it. “I should have realised it sooner… Sorry hyungs…” Onew apologised.

“Better late than never.” Sungmin replied, patting the maknae on his head and they immediately rushed into the tower and up the stairs with whatever time they had left. At the top of the tower, they found Sooyoung, Jessica and Sunny tied up and unconscious. In addition, Y was cradling Jessica in her arms, gently Jessica’s cheeks and Jessica’s neck. Her hood was down, but her back was facing them so they could not see the face of the mysterious Y. Her actions made Onew very, very jealous.

“Mmm… Sooo tasty…” Y muttered turning to face the boys, her face obscured by her hood once again. “Time’s running out, thirty seconds left. To save them, just untie them. Remember love blinds you when you fall in love…” Y told them, before disappearing in a puff of black flames.

“I swear I’ll kill her for doing outraging my Jessica noona’s modesty!!!” Onew muttered in anger.

“YAH!!! WHO SAID SHE’S YOURS?!!” Tiffany’s voice reverberated in the tower.

“Sorry Aunt Tiffany…” Onew apologised meekly. “I forgot the Aunt Tiffany was watching…” Onew thought as he scrambled to free Jessica from her bonds. Sungmin proceeded to free Sunny, while Jo Kwon went to free their umma.

No matter how many knots they untied, more knots kept appearing and it was impossible to cut through the rope either. “Counting down… Five seconds…” Y’s voice was heard.

“Wait… Y said love is blind right?” Jo Kwon questioned.

“Four.” Y’s voice was heard again.

“Yeah, so?” Sungmin asked back.

“Three.” Y continued the countdown.

“Maybe we just need to close our eyes and pour our love into the rope to untie them?” Jo Kwon suggested.

“Two.” Y stated.

“That sounds like the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard… But to hell with it… Let’s do it!” Onew replied. The three were starting to panic as time was almost up.

“One.” Y announced.

Sooyoung’s three sons closed their eyes, grabbed the roped that bound their loved ones and thought of how much they loved the three ladies.

“Zero. Time’s up!” Y finished the countdown.