As soon as they sight the fortress wall, the team picks up the pace. They’re all anxious to get up top and see if the others are there. The tension in each one of them is almost visible. They’re all quiet and serious, and Kai would be too if it were his teammates. But among them he feels like an outsider. So, when a blast of fire arcs up ahead, they all start to run except for him, who takes a moment too long to react.

He teleports forward, on Xiumin and Chen’s heels, almost making them trip. They shout at him to move and get out of their way, and continue running.

A battle rages up top. Two mimics zip and zoom around the courtyard battling Chanyeol and Baekhyun, who keep sending flares of light and fire to keep the beasts away. It takes less than a second for XO to spring into action.

Suho runs a circle around the fight and calls up water from the nearby pond, wielding it like a whip against the mimic closest to him. Baekhyun uses the opportunity to open his long fingers and shine light and heat onto the beast, causing it to further retreat.

Luhan and Chen are there waiting for it. Luhan holds his hands out and the beast pauses. Its limbs still moving but slower now. It seems his power is unable to fully stop a mimic. “Get it!”

Chen raises a hand to the heavens and a lightning bolt arches clean through the beast’s head, exploding it to pieces. Acid blood sprays around, but Suho turns the whip into a sheet of water and shields the others.

A scream comes from the other side of the courtyard. Chanyeol is sprawled on the ground, the mimic’s tentacle wrapped tight around his ankle. He touches it and the appendage catches fire and melts. But a second tentacle knocks him back down.

A string of water circles the mimic’s head, like a collar. No matter how much the beast shakes, it stays there. Xiumin takes a running slide under the beast and freezes the water, before he too is knocked aside by the tentacles. But Chen is there, lightning in his hands. He sends two shots at the ice. The beast’s head comes clean off and rolls over the courtyard.

Now Kai understands why only Lay carried a real weapon. The others had no need of them. Not with these powers.

The beast’s body staggers back, tentacles still alive. Kyungsoo stands with Lay, not moving out of the decapitated mimic’s way. The medic raises his rifle, but Kyungsoo pushes him away. The captain shoots rock after rock at the thing, but it’s not effective at all. The alien beast lumbers closer.

Kai screams at him to move, but the other fails to hear him. Before he can think better of it, he teleports in front of his captain and knocks him aside, seconds before the tentacles lash out and destroy the ground where they had previously stood. They fall hard, and he hears something pop.

Searing pain comes from his shoulder as Kyungsoo pushes him off. “What the are you doing?”

Another lighting strike, followed by the roar of a fireball, and Kai sees the second mimic’s body explode.

“I had him, you idiot!” Kyungsoo’s eyes are wide and red floods his face.

“I just…I couldn’t—” See you get hurt again, Kai thinks, but doesn’t say it.

“I don’t need to be protected,” Kyungsoo yells. “You need to work with us. Not save us. When we fight, your priority is to help bring the mimics down. No matter who falls or dies, you stick to the plan.”

Seeing you die once was enough, Kai thinks. “I won’t do it again,” he says.

Kyungsoo growls and punches him on his good arm. Kai bites back a scream as it reverberates to his other arm. “Lay! Fix this idiot up.”

Kai wants to go after him, but decides it’s better to get his dislocated arm fixed first in case the captain decided to fix it for him or just break his other arm. The medic is busy with the rest of the team, so Kai take a seat among the rocks at the edge of the fortress. The landscape in front of him is a haunting view of Seoul. With the sun making its way down the last portion of sky, casting everything in shadows.

It’s eerie and sort of depressing. However, nothing can get his mood lower than Kyungsoo hating his guts. He had suspected the other didn’t like him, but he’d entertained the idea of apologizing, of showing the other how sorry he was for what he’d done in that battlefield years ago. Now apologizing seemed…pointless.

“Don’t look so gloomy.” Lay sits down beside him. “Soo isn’t really angry. He’s just worried.”

“He looked pretty pissed to me,” Kai says.

“I’m going to touch your arm now, okay? It’s gonna hurt.” Lay reaches out to him. “You know, they give us categories to distinguish how strong or important our powers are. My healing makes me a four. Tao’s time tricks make him a five. Captain is a two. In terms of power, his is more common, less important. But you…you are a six.”

Kai doesn’t know where the conversation is going. “Okay?”

“Hah. You should’ve heard General Wu speaking about you,” Lay pitches his voice lower, “‘He will help us win this war. His is our star.’ Haha.”

First he wakes up with super powers, then he gets assigned to an insane group where the man who literally haunted his dreams is th