[oneshot] The stars remind me of you. (3/4)

[yakiseop]

“Congratulations, y’all. We made it through the tube.”

A small cheer is allowed to the crew. Not that any of them are in a particularly cheery mood - Kai and Timo know what comes after the tube, and Taemin can sense tension in the air - but they do applaud themselves on a job well done.

“Yes, we made it. And we’ll reach Earth in a few,” Ravi communicates them all through the intercom. “As soon as I figure out how the fuck to get through the garbage.”

Earth has the most impenetrable atmosphere of all planets, even worse than Ceres’, which is located dabsmackinin the middle of a literal asteroids belt. From afar, the abundant space debris almost looks like rings, like Saturn’s very own, but fainter and thinner; once you get closer, though, you notice it’s just trash. And it’s not a mere ring, either. It’s everywhere.

Over the intercom, they’ve been able to hear every sound Ravi mutters to himself, sensing the worry and confusion and slight exhaustion on the pilot’s voice, and they’re listening to it like Martian housewives following a reality show. Their hands are busy with different things - Timoteo and Taemin are playing trumph, Kai is petting the dogs - but all of their minds are focusing on the same thing. “This might be it. I might’ve sorted it out. Might have. It’s not gonna be pretty, but we’ll live. Get to the security deck and buckle up, all of you.”

Kai glances at the stairs that lead up to the security deck. They use it so seldom that the fridge is partially blocking the access to it. He sighs. “This way, guys,” he leads on, scooping up the dogs to go up. The trumph cards flutter noisily in Timo’s agitated hands.

From up there in the security deck, they can see Ravi piloting, sitting alone in a sea of wires, a confusion of keyboards, touchpads, and at least six screens, each of which showing a different graphic. Through the windshield, the view is breathtaking - Earth, the crib of mankind, whose beautiful blue color can still be spotted through the debris. Kai has been up there few times, and each of the times he had been amazed at what he saw, but the windshield was never this clean; the image had never been this clear, this palpable. He’s mesmerized.

“Oh, I’ve never been up here,” Timoteo comments lively, walking around, inspecting the seats, and Kai snaps out of it. “I suppose we should sit here, right?”

“Right! Right, take your sits,” Kai suddenly remembers he’s supposed to assist them, since he’s the oldest member of the crew. As Taemin chooses a sit nearby where Kai is standing, he turns around to help, kneeling on the arm rest to pull out the security belt. “Here, this should go here... and this lock... here...” Click, click, click, all the buckles make under Kai’s hands. “There it is. Good, good.”

“Thanks,” Taemin smiles, and Kai is suddenly aware that he’s sort of totally straddling him. Also, his face might be closer to Taemin’s than what’s considered strictly necessary. His body is acting on his intimate impulses at the least appropriate time. Kai is shamed.

“You’re welcome!” He squeaks as he quickly hops away from Taemin, ears flaming in embarrassment. “Now I-oh, Timo, here-”

Of course, Timoteo is already all set up. He’s locking the last buckle when Kai turns to him, and, upon seeing Kai’s shock, he grins maliciously. “I’m good,” he says, winking. Kai truly is shamed.

“Okay,” he mumbles. “Then-helmets...”

“Hurry the fuck up,” Ravi’s voice booms in the intercom, and it can also be heard acapella across the deck, which creates a strange echo. “We gotta go fast or I’ll have to calculate this all over again.”

Kai, in no position to contest the command, simply shouts “Sorry!” and does hurry the fuck up. In a snap, he’s putting Taemin’s helmet on for him, throwing Timo’s on his lap (a small revenge), and quickly getting himself buckled up and protected as well. When he’s done, uncomfortable leather straps across his torso and funky-smelling helmet on his head, he shouts. “Crew ready!”

“Alright then,” Ravi responds, and they can see him slide to the front on his stool, getting past the computers and now sitting at the actual piloting panel. “Just a note: it’s okay to vomit. Don’t hold it in, it can be worse for us all. Close your eyes to appease the nausea, and don’t leave your seats or even the deck under any circumstances.” A pause. Ravi’s hand is on the steering wheel. “Here we go.”

It’s only then that a thought dawns on Kai - fucking shit, the dogs. Where are the dogs? He’s pretty sure he just heard one of them run across the main deck. Fuck, what should he do? Should he go save them? Should he try to call them? He can’t just leave them-

And just as Kai is falling in despair, a symphony of clicking claws can be heard, and the dogs emerge from the stairs, running towards them with seriousness in each step. Monggu jumps, with certain difficulty, onto Kai’s lap, where Kai holds him tight with unimaginable relief. Turning around, he sees that Jjangah did the same with Taemin, whereas Jjanggu chose Timo as a seat. Timo shoots the dog a very puzzled look.

“And Ravi doesn’t think you’re smart,” Kai confides to Monggu, scratching his belly as the ship starts to shift down. “Aren’t you a smart doggie? So smart, my baby, so smart...”

The engines roar, the ship accelerates, and Kai shuts up, closing his eyes and waiting.

Landing is... rough. Kai likes to make fun of Ravi for his landings, always a little on the clumsy side no matter how much time goes by, but this is by far the worst one they’ve had since their last actual accident. By the time they’re safely on land, all of Kai’s bones hurt. He’s clearly not the only one.

“I bit my tongue,” Taemin comments, checking for blood.

“Helmets were a good idea,” Timo remarks, a bit green in the face. “A great idea, I’d say.”

“We’ve landed, guys! Y’all can go down now,” Ravi communicates through the intercom, slowly getting to his own feet and stretching his limbs. “Also, welcome to Earth! I’ll be down in a few and then we can go out. We should go in our cars, I’m not sure if the soil here is navigable.”

Taemin is confused. “What does he mean?” he asks Kai.

Kai is also confused. “I don’t know. What does he mean?” he asks Timoteo.

“It’s probably fine for about fifty meters, then it turns murky,” Timo answers, but anyone can tell he’s isn’t all that sure either. “Earth is eighty percent water, you know. At least half of it is ambiguous swamps.”

Kai, who has never seen a swamp in his life, is intimidated. Ravi chooses this moment to gallop down the stairs. “Are we taking the dogs? We should probably leave the dogs here.” Kai agrees.

“So, since my car is fuel-less,” Timoteo grins coquettishly, hopping over to where Ravi is standing. “I want to ride with my fiancé. I guess we’re all settled then?”

“This doesn’t suit me well,” Ravi deadpans, giving Timo the stankest face. “I insist that I must ride with Taemin, since my mono is the spacier.”

“Bullshit! Fallacy!” Kai chants rather viciously, refusing to acknowledge such an act of betrayal. “Yours is cluttered as fuck inside! And I drive the best, so Taemin should ride with me!”

“Last time we landed, you crashed,” Timo points out.

“In fact, you’ve had two crashes in the last two landings,” with friends like Ravi, one is in no need for enemies, Kai thinks.

“I strongly refuse!! So does Taemin! Right, Taemin?” Taemin looks dumbfounded as fuck in the sidelines.

The discussion goes on and on, until Kai and Ravi decide to play rock-paper-scissors to decide who gets to take Taemin (“What is this? What is this rejection?” Timo whines, and no one pays him attention). Much to Kai’s chagrin, Ravi wins, and Timoteo complains about it the entire time, even after they’re out, the garage door closing behind their backs. Defeat is deeply buried into Kai’s fragilized heart, despite them all riding with their windshields down and close enough to chat in loud voices as they cruise.

“You know, this is not as bad as I thought it’d be,” Kai confesses at a certain moment, to whoever might be listening. When he thought of Earth, he thought of the dumpsters back in Mars, but larger, wetter, and smellier. Instead, Earth has deep blue oceans like Ganymede’s own, and the brilliance of the sunlight lazily reflects on the piles and piles of modern-times ruins. “It’s kind of nice.”

“It really is,” Ravi shouts back at him from his ship. It’s then when, upon glancing at Ravi’s ship to continue the conversation, Kai spots Taemin, sitting sideways across the back of Ravi’s mono, hair messy from the strong wind, and looking... distracted? … melancholic?

“It’s better than the pics make it looks, for sure,” Timo suddenly shouts from right behind Kai’s back, where he’s sitting cross-legged on the mono’s short tail. “It’s still pretty bad for what it used to be, but, well...”

No one replies to that, and the conversation drifts away in the wind.

Kai can’t shrug off the feeling that there’s something wrong with Taemin. While the other two, and himself, are contemplating Earth with various degrees of curiosity and amazement, Taemin is oddly placid, as if he was-what? What is he feeling? He needs to talk to him. Maybe he can find out what it is, maybe he can help him to cheer up...

“Hey, you!” He shouts at Timo, who, knowing ‘you’ is no one else but himself, turns to listen. “Don’t you think you’ve sat there for long enough?”

Timo feigns surprise at him. “Oh, right. I forgot I was supposed to jump a few seconds ago. Dumb me.”

“Ravi, shouldn’t we switch? This isn’t fair!” Kai turns at his friend, making a begging face at him.

Ravi frowns at him in outrage. “What’s this?! Are we supposed to take turns?”

“Taemin’s been with you for long enough already! Besides,” Kai grins quite snottily at him. “I just want to show him that I’m the best pilot.”

“Oh? Very well then!” Ravi is understandably annoyed. Kai mentally asks for his forgiveness. He just needs to talk to Taemin... “Taemin, how’s that? Do you want to ride with this loser?”

Taemin shrugs slowly, at legitimate loss. Kai takes over. “Look, of course he does. He can ride with you again later. And then me again. And choose who he thinks is the best pilot.” Nice save, Kai. “Fly closer so he can get here.”

At that, Taemin wakes up. “Oh, I have to jump?”

“Yep.” Ravi says. “Still up to it?”

“Uh,” Taemin is hesitating. Kai, who’s already flying a little lower to help with the transition, shoots him a pleading glance. “Sure, I guess.”

“Oh, Kai, so sweet of you to worry about me,” Timo snarls from behind him, and, for a split second, Kai does actually feel bad, because shit, he totally forgot about him. “Don’t worry, I’m fine, thank you.” When he does check upon him, Timo is already hanging from the tail of Ravi’s mono, swinging upwards like a monkey and landing on his butt. Impressive. Had he missed by one millimeter, it would’ve been the end of Timoteo Wenkui Pomello Moonkyu Smitherson Kim, white collar criminal and the sixteenth most expensive bounty head in the universe.

Well, back to Taemin. Despite his initial insecurity, the transition from one ship to another is smooth. Taemin jumps like an athlete, Kai thinks, or a cat. Even in the strong gravity of Earth, the strongest of all habitable planets, Taemin manages to land on Kai’s mono with little to no sound. Kai is so surprised he laughs.

“Nice jump,” he compliments as Taemin crawls forward to the cockpit, also giggling. As soon as he delivers Taemin, Ravi speeds away, already immersed in an argument about mono design and driving with Timoteo. “Ravi is weird-looking and uncool. I’m much cooler.”

“You guys... come on,” Taemin nudges him with his foot, and Kai inches forward, letting Taemin slip into the space between his back and the seat. Kai’s heart hammers against his rips almost painfully. Even though he had rode behind Ravi’s seat all this time... “Ravi was right about one thing, though.”

“What?” Kai widens his eyes.

“His mono is spacier,” Taemin says, staring at Kai as if expecting a very specific reaction. Kai contorts his face in great displeasure, and it seems to be what Taemin was expecting, as he laughs out loud and slaps Kai’s shoulder. “I’m kidding~.”

“I’m heartbroken,” Kai jokes, or does he joke?, he jokes. Their soft chuckles dissolve like tea powder in Earth’s yellow sunlight.

It’s harder to read Taemin with his back turned to him, Kai realizes. It’s harder - but not impossible. He feels something. Is that his imagination? He feels the faint way how Taemin’s fingers grasp his waist, how Taemin slumps, perhaps tiredly, against his back. Is that his imagination...? Or is Taemin really disappointed?

“What’s up?” Kai blurts out not very smoothly, but efficient as an approach to the subject. “You’re a little down, aren’t you? Are you feeling sick?”

A pause. A sigh, almost imperceptible, hadn’t Taemin’s chest been directly against Kai’s back, his metal necklace digging slightly between Kai’s shoulder blades.

“I’m not sick,” Taemin starts off by clarifying. “I’m just... sad, I guess. Looking at all this, after I saw the pictures...” another sigh, louder this time. “I don’t understand it myself.”

Kai’s brows crease sadly. He has a bad feeling about that. “I get it. It’s really a pity, I guess. This used to be a nice place.”

“I don’t feel so much for the cities and buildings, but...” Taemin’s arms tighten around Kai’s waist, and Kai’s chest tightens around his heart. Such an intimate hug. Such an intense feeling. “I... I don’t know why, but I thought it’d be a little more... fertile.”

It clicks in Kai’s head like a premonition. Ah, he thinks. Taemin is talking about flowers.

The transmitter hisses and ticks out of the blue, and both of them jump in startle at the sudden sound. As soon as he recognizes the sound as the connection being stabilized, Kai’s startle is replaced with equal parts mortification and curiosity. If anyone speaks up just to mock their conversation from right now, Kai will take a knife to that person’s genitals.

“Not to alarm anyone,” it’s Ravi’s voice, and it’s not mocking; it’s a bit, well, alarmed. “But there are some cars flying above us. About five miles higher and two miles further north.” A pause. “It’s a flock of five. I have no idea what it’s going on.”

Kai thinks. He’s not sure it’s unusual to have flocks of monos flying around Earth - even though the planet is a wasteland, people still come to visit, and there’s a rumor that some even live here - but it sure gotta mean something that they’re so close. “What do they look like?” he asks finally. “Police? Hunters?”

“Can’t see. Let me find my glasses... oh, here they are.” Ravi is the only idiot Kai knows that calls binoculars ‘glasses’. He says it’s Callistonian slang, but Kai doubts it. “Uh, they sure look like police, but I have no idea from where. Does Earth have its own police?”

“Nope,” Timo is the one to answer, voice a bit distant and quiet but even more alarmed than Ravi. Comprehensibly so. “I looked into that. This could be Titan’s armed forces, judging from the coat of arms, but they have no business to do here-”

A bang. Something comes down flying, and Kai brakes so abruptly he hits his chest on the steering wheel. For a split of second, his heart stops beating.

“Okay, okay, they’re shooting,” Ravi’s voice booms through the intercom as three more bangs echo above them, and three more bullets barely avoid them. “Seek coverage. I repeat, seek coverage immediately!!”

Kai doesn’t need to be told twice.

He has driven fast, and he has driven fast enough to feel lethal even to himself, but he has never driven so fast as he is right now. The only way to avoid getting shot that he can think of is to be too fast and too unpredictable to aim at, so he cuts through the air in violent swerves, hearing the bullets as they zoom through him in multiple directions. IF ONLY I HAD A FUCKING WINDSHIELD, he violently thinks to himself as the wind makes his eyes insufferably dry.

“I can see a cave!!” Taemin screams directly against his ear, his arms now as tight as a safety belt around Kai’s chest. “Can you see it?!”

“HONESTLY I CAN’T SEE SHIT,” Kai yells over the howling wind, pretty much turning the ship upside down to avoid maintaining course. “WHERE?”

“Just go-left, NOW,” this time he does turn the ship upside down, and, if they don’t fall to meet the sweet embrace of Earth’s oceans that waltz right below them, it’s all thanks to centripetal force. “You’re almost there, down a tad, right, right, smooth to the right, shit, left, down down downdowndown UP UP-”

Thanks to his extensive experience as a pilot, Kai remembers to pull the brakes when landing, and it’s what stops them from sliding all the way through the cave. The landing sends a whole lot of dirt flying around the wings, and Kai barely has time to swerve in a U shape to avoid having the mono nose-diving into a small lake nearby.

All in all, a whole lot of things could’ve gone fatally wrong; yet, they’re still alive. Kai got a lot to say thanks for next time he goes home and visits his neighborhood’s shrine.

It’s half to his surprise that he finds Ravi and Timoteo inside as well, faces covered in dust and dirt and cold sweat. He carefully drives his mono some inches forward, to avoid any risks with the lake, and hops off. Taemin follows suit.

“The fuck was that,” he deadpans.

Ravi shrugs. He’s the one who’s the sweatiest. Judging from how bloodshot his eyes are, he didn’t have time to put goggles on either. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he says. “Titan police? Shooting at us? On Earth?” As a stone cold guess pierces through both of them, Ravi and Kai turn to stare at Timoteo.

“What?” Timo is a little defensive.

“Just answer yes or no,” Ravi warns him. “Did you do funny stuff to Titan’s government?”

“Oh, so that’s the thing?” the laugh Timoteo lets out is bitter. “Sure then. If you think it’s me, then let it be me.”

“That’s not what I asked you,” Ravi growls. “Just say yes or-”

“I haven’t dealt business in Titan specifically, as that place is depressing to even look at,” Timo interrupts him, a sour smile on his lips as he turns to Ravi’s mono and starts rummaging through its interior. “But who knows. Who knows if I didn’t do something, anything, to these people in particular. Who knows if someone who wants my head didn’t send them after me. I, sure enough, don’t.” His hands emerges with two pairs of goggles in them, one of which he shoves into Ravi’s chest. “But I guess you and Kai are right. I’m the most probable cause for this. So,” He shrugs, toying with the other pair distractedly. “I guess I should go.”

Kai raises his brows. “Go away?”

“Go distract them, you fool,” Timo snarls, throwing the goggles at Kai. They hit him on the head. “Take these, since you don’t have yours.”

Kai collects the goggles slowly, his brain a bit wary to process the information just given to him. “I do have mine,” he contests belatedly. “I just didn’t have time-”

“Then give those back,” Timo cuts him off, hand extended. Kai does as told, and the swindler throws them back into Ravi’s mono rather than putting them on. He then snatches the ignition keys from Ravi’s hands. “I’m stealing your car.”

Ravi is in a similar state as Kai, but he’s quick, and he puts on a fight. “The fuck? No you aren’t!!”

“It’s this or you fossilizing at the bottom of the sea here Earth,” Timoteo threatens, using his agility to climb up onto Ravi’s mono and start the engine. “You,” he points at Kai while his other hand pulls the windshield up. “Take Ravi and Taemin back to the ship, and get out of here before they catch a whiff of any of you. Got it?”

Kai is still a bit lethargic. “O... kay...?”

Timoteo stares at him for a long, still moment. Then, he laughs. “So fucking slow. Jesus.” And he starts the engine. And he flies off out of the cave, clouds of dust forming as he gains speed.

It finally sinks.

“Shit. We gotta go,” Kai pretty much hails Taemin and Ravi over to his ship, somehow fitting Taemin, who’s a tad more compact, hiding between the seat’s backrest and the cockpit’s own back. Ravi finds a place over the pedals. “Oh my god if we survive-”

“Just GO ALREADY,” Ravi screams, and Kai starts the engine out of the startle. And there they go.

The noise of multiple shots is almost deafeningly close outside of the cave - that has to be multiple machine guns, it’s impossible to be anything else - but it’s not close enough to completely hinder their escape, so Kai shoves his foot onto the rear accelerator and fly the fuck away of that madness. With one hand, he search for his goggles in the necessities box, but he needs to completely let go of the steering wheel to put them on.

“You’re going to get us killed!!” Ravi screams in outrage as he himself holds the wheel still so they won’t spiral downwards. Kai finishes his business with the goggles and regains control of the car.

“Sorry!” he retorts, and increases speed.

As relatively free of danger as the rush back to the ship is, having the shooting and persecution been left behind momentarily, Kai just can’t feel at peace. First, because he has no idea of why a flock of armed force cars tried to kill them all in such a remote place. Second, because, at each shooting sound he hears in the distance, he remembers that Timoteo is fighting alone against five heavily armed men - and maybe even more, since it’s unlikely that they’ve come without a mothership. As much as Timo truly is dangerous company, and he might, after all, be the cause of all that, it doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t sit well with him.

When they finally arrive at the Kiev, he helps Ravi to climb off, then he helps Taemin. And then, at last, he climbs back onto the car.

Ravi glares at him. “I know what you’re thinking-”

“And I know what you’re thinking,” Kai quickly interrupts, finding his pistol in the usual place. “But I just don’t think it’s fair, you know. I mean, after all the shit we went through with him, are we really going to let the police catch him? And not collect the money?” Kai shakes his head, rolling his eyes to signalize how absurd that is. “Besides, he can’t just die and leave that horrible thing aboard,” he signalizes Timoteo’s own mono, a chromed blue sports model, with his head. “It’s tainting our ship.”

Ravi, who was previously glaring at him with anger and dread, has cooled down since. Now, he has a faint half-smile on his lips. He understand what Kai means, even if it’s not put in words, or in gestures. After all, what can any of them say? Timoteo truly is persuasive.

“Don’t get yourself killed,” Ravi warns him, dropping the smile. “I’m serious. In no hypothesis-”

The moment is smashed to pieces by Taemin, who pulls Kai’s arm with aggressiveness previously unseen from him. “Make room,” he deadpans.

Caught off-guard, Kai sputters. “I-Taemin, no, you-”

“Just the thought of you getting killed makes me sick,” Taemin declares, pretty much shoving himself back where he had been, crouching behind the seat. “If you die, I want to at least be able to do something about it. Do any of you have a spare gun?” He finishes off by asking, looking back and forth at the two of them as if he had never said anything more normal than that.

Ravi blinks several times before pulling his own pistol out of his pocket and handing it over to Taemin. “Perfect. Thank you,” Taemin says.

By then, Kai’s face has flushed into an unattractive shade of burgundy, and he’s desperately trying to look away from absolutely everyone to hide it. Ravi shoots him a worried look before commenting, “I guess I’ll monitor y’all then...” and retreating to the deck. Your discretion is appreciated, Ravi, Kai thinks fervorouslyas his cheeks’ temperature starts at last going down from ‘on fire’ to a normal level.

He’s still in the process of recovering when Taemin taps him on the shoulder and urges him to go. “We have to catch up before the worst happens,” he says, and he’s right, so Kai starts the engine, clicks the garage door open, and flies off once again.

It’s only once they’re already in the air, once the wind is threatening to tear his hair off once again as he rushes to find the battlefield, that the thought hits Kai: he really might not make it back to the ship. He really might not ever see Ravi again, depending on how things go down with the police. And, what bugs him at the moment is - he might die without ever telling Taemin what he feels for him.

Not seeing Ravi again feels too unreal for him to be bothered, but not confessing... it’s disturbing. Taking his affection for Taemin to the grave feels, at the same time, very possible and wrong, leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

He has to say something.

Immediately.

He can’t risk missing this chance.

“Taemin,” his courage evades his body as soon as the words leave his mouth. Regret washes over him, cold and frightening.

“What?” Taemin is alarmed. Of course he is, Kai thinks to himself, horribly remorseful. Of course he is, considering the situation. He can’t just not say anything. “Kai, what is it? What happened?”

“No, nothing,” Kai dismisses immediately, his grip around the steering wheel unnecessarily tight. “I... uh,” gurgle gurgle, “I just. Really hope we don’t die!”

A pause. Then, a loud explosion of laughter right next to Kai’s ear, loud enough to cut through the wind and make him flinch. “Oh man, you scared me,” Taemin laughs and laughs more, and Kai wonders why on Earth (literally) he’s almost hurt by it.

Well, ‘almost’ because, at that very same moment, a bullet zooms through them, right above Kai’s ear.

“Fuck shit FUCK,” Kai swerves violently, spiraling away as a billion other bullets keep coming from the fucking nowhere, aimed specifically at them. “Fuck, Taemin, are you okay? Taemin!!”

“I’m good! Jesus, what was that??” Thank God, Kai thinks feverishly, thank all the gods actually. “Did we get there already? Where’s Timoteo?”

“They’re following us, they’re aiming at us,” Kai snarls as a machine gun roars right above them, and he catches a glance of a flock of monos just as he speeds up. “For some reason, they’re aiming directly at us, I have no idea of what’s fucking going on-”

A bullet to their right wing. Kai screams, looping to the side, and going down to mimic a fall. “MOTHERFUCKERS,” he curses loudly, taking a look at the wing to make sure his baby isn’t hurt. Nothing to fret about, he notices, but increase in precision from the shooters is alarming. “Fuck these people man, we gotta counter-attack. Don’t shoot yet, though, that pistol is low-range.”

“Up to fifty meters. I know.” A pause. “I don’t know why I know this, but I know.”

“It doesn’t matter why. They think we crashed,” Kai explains as he brusquely guides the car back up, right behind a pile of debris. “Right now, at least. If they’re really the police, they’re gonna go down to check. Shoot them then. Got it?”

“Got it,” Taemin rogers the commands. They reduce speed, Kai looking up for any signs of aerial vigilance. Then, he hears engines. They’re coming. They’re coming. Kai waits...

That’s gotta be a fucking bazooka that hits them next.

“Fucking SHIT,” yes, once again, Kai curses in yells as the pile of debris explodes over them. Well, at least it shielded them for a while. “Shoot whoever you see, Taemin! NOW!”

They come into view soon - a dozen, two dozen of men clad in black, the gold coat of arms visible on their chest as they shoot incessantly at them. Kai uses the mono itself as a barricade, praying that the car will take it well as he shoots without aiming, just shoots, shoots, shoots. The noise is horrible, deafening. And where the fuck is Timoteo? Is he dead? Is he dead already? Kai shoots furiously.

“Taemin, how is it back there?” Kai asks during a refuge period. The machine guns spit fire above his head. “Hurt anywhere?”

“No. You?” Taemin breathes out. As Kai replies with a faint ‘no’, Taemin lets out a deep breath. “This is so scary.”

“It is.” Kai’s hands have been shaking all this time. “I’m gonna do a drive-by shooting. I’ll drive to run over them, and you shoot anyone still standing. Can you do that?”

“I have to,” Taemin says, voice oddly placid, and Kai feels horribly sorry for him. “Come on. Let’s do it.”

Kai loses no time.

The mono gives out an ungodly screech as Kai roughly knees the accelerator, driving from under the main panel. This is gonna be his most dangerous stunt so far... possibly his last... he better go with everything he has.

“EAT SHIT,” he heroically screams as he barely controls his crazed vehicle towards the shooters. As it hits the first person, Kai realizes that he’s gonna have to pop up to drive, that he can’t drive from down there the entire time, so he says a quick prayer and sits up. “AAAAAAAAAARGH,” he yells savagely, hitting policeman after policeman in a grotesquely beautiful sequence.

Eventually, as he drives and shoots and shoots and drives without even protecting himself anymore, the inevitable happens; after he has ran over about half of the officers shooting at them, some of which even tried to escape rather frenziedly, one officers aims well enough to put a bullet on him. He doesn’t even notice it at first, he just notices the bastard aiming right at him and shooting and motherfucker!! And it’s only after the enemy is flying two meters in the air and Taemin is shooting him like a darts game target that the pain kicks in.

“Shit,” he mutters as he realizes what it probably is. “Shit,” he mutters a little louder as he brings a hand to the wound and feels blood flow through his fingers. “Shiiiit,” he moans in pain as his body communicates him that something’s wrong, and he shoots haphazardly at the policemen to try to appease it. In the distant blue sky of Earth, more cars are coming.

“Kai,” Taemin calls. Fucking shit. “Kai, how’s there? We got these,” a shot to finish off the last one. “But there’s more coming.”

Kai winces. His head feels light. “Kai?” Taemin calls again.

“I got shot,” Kai confesses. Both of his hands are on the wound, as if trying to manually close it, to hold the blood in, but it’s useless.

There’s a pause before Taemin’s reaction. And Taemin’s reaction is to jump over him, over the seat, landing on the hood with wide, wide eyes and white lips.

“Here. Here,” he pries Kai’s hands away from the wound, right below his ribs, on the soft part of his torso. “Let me see it. Oh, God,” Taemin’s voice quivers as he see it. Kai looks down to see too. Blood. A lot of blood. Who knew there was that much blood in his body... “Oh my God, this is bad.”

“It isn’t. We need to get Timo,” Kai insists, raising a bloody hand to Taemin’s face for a soft touch. Energy is leaving his body in waves and bouts. He sure hope this isn’t what dying feels like, because it’s a bit pathetic. “Timo can’t die. You can’t die...”

“You can’t die!!” Taemin screams at him, and it’s brief - it’s a brief hallucination, but, for a split second, Kai sees Taemin’s irises gleam white. He also sees the sky turn green, but that he knows to be a result of his faltering senses. Hahaha, what is he thinking? “You can’t die. And you won’t die. You won’t die.”

“But you-” Kai tries, but Taemin shuts him up by grabbing his chin. Not violently - intimately.

“I won’t die.” It’s more than a promise. It’s an affirmation. The universe is vast. Styx is cold. Taemin won’t die. After a pause, and some more of Kai’s hallucinations, Taemin scoffs. “It’d take them quite the effort to kill me off.”

They’re coming. Kai can see them coming, already near enough to shoot with their awful guns... blood, so much blood, and noise, so much noise... the very last thing Kai sees is Taemin standing up on the hood of the K-IV, a single pistol in his hand, and getting thoroughly executed by the machine guns, and Kai thinks, what the fuck, Taemin, you fucking said you wouldn’t die-

It feels like he has been out for a lifetime.

Eerily enough, it could’ve easily been so.

It could. It really could, but, as Kai realizes once he opens his eyes and tastes moisture on his lips, he has not reincarnated. His hands, as he verifies when looking down, are still his own hands. So far, so good. His legs also look the same, at least from that distance and in the dark...

Kai blinks. He looks at the sky, eyes slowly focusing on Earth’s single, lonely moon, and then - the stars. The millions and millions of stars. The bright streaks of the milky way galaxy, the bigger, brighter planets, and the tiny, distant glows of other suns. It’s so breathtakingly beautiful - beautiful unlike the skies on anywhere else, unlike any night skies that Kai has seen in his entire life - that it takes him a while for him to think, shit, for how long have I been out...?

He hastily sits up, and almost falls back down when flares of pain invade his ribcage, forcing a scream out of him with how intense it was. He’s trying his best to breathe normally when a hand lands on his shoulder, and he knows, as if by way of a spell - it’s Taemin.

“Lie back down,” Taemin’s voice is gentle right beside his ear, soothing like a mother’s as he helps Kai to lower himself once again. He is, by now, half-aware of where he is; inside his own mono, lying on the seat, which has been leant back to almost horizontal position. Since he doesn’t feel the engine, he assumes the engine is off and the car is parked. Glancing around in the dark, he couldn’t possibly be more clueless as to where they are.

And Taemin...

“Taemin,” Kai calls, voice unexpectedly hoarse, throat unexpectedly rusty. “Taemin...”

“I’m here,” Taemin replies, and moves to sit by Kai’s side, holding Kai’s hand in his own, palms oddly rough... “I’m right here.” As Kai’s eyes grow used to the darkness, he starts seeing Taemin clearer and clearer, and a horrified scream gets lodged in his throat once he realizes what he’s seeing.

Taemin is covered, head to toe, in bullet wounds. His face is disfigured by them, his neck, his arms, his chest-they’re all over him. Some are brightly red and wet, still open but not dripping blood; some are covered in scabs, dark and hardened; and some are round and what, lightly pinkish at the center, but looking like... as if...

Kai stares for long enough that Taemin notices. When Taemin follows Kai’s glance, he smiles sadly. “It looks bad but it’s really not,” he says, fingers touching absentmindedly one of the open wounds, one on the right side of his chest. “The worst will heal in one hour and thirteen minutes. All wounds will be closed and out of risk of inflammation in two hours, more or less depending on how much I move. In twenty-four hours, the scars will be gone, and it’ll be like nothing ever happened to me.” He opens his arms, allowing Kai to see more wounds, clearer. “Isn’t technology amazing?”

Kai doesn’t understand.

“You... but...” he can’t phrase the question at all. In all honestly, he doesn’t even know what he wants to ask. “I... humans don’t heal that fast, Taemin, you need to treat those... I mean, we need to treat those, I can help...”

He moves as if to try getting up, but Taemin stops him promptly, hands firm, and yet not forceful, on his shoulders. Is it just him? Or has Taemin’s smile gotten sadder?

“You answered your own question,” Taemin communicates, and Kai is even more confused, because what? What did he say?!

“What?” Kai agonizes. He doesn’t like this. He feels like he’s missing some important information, and he doesn’t like it, at all. Taemin is silent now, eyes unfocused as he immerses in thought, and Kai just wants to yank him out of it for answers. “Taemin, what’s going on?”

It does seem to reach Taemin, even if faintly. Taemin is still looking away, but he seems to be more... present, one could say. He’s about to say something. Kai needs to wait now.

“Well,” Taemin starts off hesitantly. “I have good news, and bad news for you,” he turns to look into Kai’s eyes, and Kai is confused by the mix of sadness and humor he reads in Taemin’s expression. “Bad first?”

“Bad first,” Kai agrees.

“Okay, so, bad news,” Taemin sits, legs crossed, on the hood of Kai’s mono. Kai wishes he was sitting closer to him. He feels distant. “I’m not a human being. At all. I have never been one, not even when I was living like one, before I remembered my past.”

Kai blinks. He blinks once again, and then once again, slowly processing the information. “You... remembered your past...?”

“My memories came back not long ago, during the shooting,” Taemin declares, avoiding Kai’s eyes in order to gaze into the horizon. “So, yeah. I’m not human. But hey, the good news!” Taemin announces, reaching forward to squeeze Kai’s hand, still not looking at him. “I’m worth fifty-seven trillion woolongs. If you hand me over, you’ll never have to hunt again.”

??? Kai doesn’t understand. Taemin is worth a what? Hand him over? Fifty-seven trillion woolongs? What?

“What?” Kai vocalizes. “Taemin, I don’t understand. What’s going on? Why are you talking about-what?”

Taemin chuckles darkly, changing positions in order to straddle the car instead of sitting on it. It brings him closer, a little closer, but, emotionally, he seems more distant than ever.

“You don’t recognize me. I suppose they never put on pictures with the ad,” he comments with fake, fake nonchalance. “Let me introduce myself, then. I’m not Taemin. That’s not my name, nor has it ever been. My official serial number is MR10V.” Pause. “You understand what that means, right?”

The air stands still around Kai’s head. His breath stays still inside his throat. Pressure. Light-headness. Shock.

“The Eve of the Future,” he gasps, his vision swims, and the conversation has to be postponed.

part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4

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