breathtaking, fantastic
breathtaking, fantastic
infinite + vixx, myungsoo/hongbin
pg (violence), 8,609w
kim myungsoo, a.k.a. infinite black, has a lot to deal with: his civilian job at the woollim daily newspaper, an upstart group of superheroes (and one robot) that's threatening to make his beloved team irrelevant, and a tall, mysterious man with a camera and a killer smile. oh yeah, and those exo aliens that keep trying to destroy seoul.
--written for ifntvalentine 2016.
By the time Myungsoo arrives on the scene in Gangnam, the EXO alien is already through the portal and is doing high kicks through the side of the GS Tower, sending glass crashing to the ground and civilians scrambling for cover. The teleporting alien named Kai is nowhere to be seen - it's probably made it back to its home planet by now, ready to bring another one of its fellow aliens through the portal in pursuit of what they called the "Black Pearl". The police are on the scene to evacuate the building, and there's a small, makeshift barrier around the front entrance.
Myungsoo curses softly, feeling the full weight of the DSLR camera around his neck. Once the news alert had come in of the third alien attack in two weeks, he had hoped to sneak off before his boss could assign him to cover it. But he had been caught in the hallway, and he couldn't very well teleport out of the Woollim Daily office in full sight of his coworkers, nor once one of the newspaper's interns had been forced to drive him to the scene. In the car, he'd quietly sent a distress signal to the others, but no one has responded to it yet.
His heart is racing and his mouth is dry, but Sunggyu always insists Myungsoo's position at the Daily is too valuable to sacrifice, so he takes the lens cover off his camera and snaps a few shots for the sake of keeping his cover. Just a few photos, he thinks, until the others arrive. Then he can put on his costume and teleport directly into the scene and join them.
As he zooms in closer on the wreckage, he sees someone else taking photos much closer to it, a tall guy with wavy red-brown hair. He's probably not a journalist; he has no press credentials around his neck, and anyway, Myungsoo's never seen him before. Probably just a university student. A police officer behind him is frantically gesturing for him to get out of the way, but the student pays no attention, just adjusts the setting on his camera and takes another shot.
There's a loud cracking noise as the alien takes another kick at the tower. Myungsoo looks up from his viewfinder and sees a broken piece of concrete falling in the direction of the university student. His heart leaps, and his mind goes blank. He looks around for help, but everyone else looks just as stunned as him. It's a bad idea to use his powers in public like this, even if no one's looking at him, but he has no other choice. Sorry, Sunggyu, he thinks, and he teleports.
He reappears across the street under the building and tackles the student out of the way, just as the concrete beam smashes into the ground, bringing up a cloud of dust. Myungsoo coughs, waving it out of his face. "Are you okay?" he asks.
The university student is staring at where the beam landed, eyes huge with shock. He's handsome, and when he looks up at Myungsoo, Myungsoo's stomach jolts involuntarily. "You saved me," he says.
"Yeah," Myungsoo replies. The student doesn't say anything more, just stares at him. Myungsoo realizes he's still cradling him and lets go, almost dropping him on the ground. "Sorry."
"No, it's okay, I-"
Suddenly the alien is standing over them, and Myungsoo's camera is no longer around his neck, but smashed on the ground. "No pictures, oppa," the alien hisses at Myungsoo.
The university student gets up and pulls Myungsoo up with him. "Come on!" he says. When Myungsoo doesn't move, the other man grabs his hand and pulls him along until he's running too. But once they've gotten a few metres away, the alien reappears in front of them.
"Another teleporter," Myungsoo blurts out. The student looks at him quizzically.
There's a loud flash of fire at the alien's leg. It roars and whirls around, and Myungsoo sees Sungyeol running up from behind, dressed in his costume as Infinite Pink. The alien prepares to charge, but Sungyeol sends another fireball at it, and it vanishes.
The others have arrived too, and Sunggyu stops when he sees Myungsoo. "Are you okay?" he asks through the white mask covering his face. "Go," he tells the others, when they stop to check on Myungsoo as well, and the five of them continue running toward where the alien has resumed attacking the building.
"You go too," Myungsoo says. "I need to..." He looks around, but the university student is gone.
"Come on," Sunggyu says. "How do you feel?"
He puts the back of one hand against Myungsoo's face. He's taken his gloves off, and the brain-to-brain link created through his touch helps put Myungsoo's mind back in order. "I'm all right."
They duck into an alley behind the building. Sunggyu guards the entrance while Myungsoo pulls on his costume. "Do you know what its power is?" Sunggyu asks.
"I think it's teleportation."
Sunggyu groans. "Great, another one. I hope Green can sniff it out again."
Myungsoo comes out of the alleyway, now fully in costume as Infinite Black. "I'm ready."
Sunggyu offers his gloved hand. "Then let's go." Holding his hand, Myungsoo closes his eyes, and teleports the two of them together.
They reappear at the foot of the GS Tower, among the civilians rushing out of the building to safety. A few metres away from them, he spots Hoya's purple suit. Hoya's struggling to keep up a wall of glass, along with Sungjong and his yellow-suited duplicate. It looks like it keeps slipping back a little every time the three of them push it up, as if something is interfering with their progress. Meanwhile, Woohyun is a red blur around the site. He's obviously chasing something, but his patterns of movement are erratic and keep stopping and starting. There's a few scorch marks on the sidewalk where Sungyeol's blasts have missed their target.
Dongwoo is escorting a woman towards the evacuation zone, carrying her broken high heels in one hand. Once she's made it to safety, he spots Myungsoo, and the parts of his face visible behind his green mask light up. "Black, you made it!" he shouts. "I was worried about you."
"Looks like you were doing okay without me," Myungsoo replies, looking around. There's a rumbling followed by screaming, as the alien takes out another section of the tower's ground floor. "Sort of."
Dongwoo shakes his head. "This one is really weird," he says. "The air keeps changing the way it smells."
Myungsoo glances to where Sunggyu is kneeling in the evacuation zone. His eyes are closed and his hands are on a man's head, maybe soothing him, or maybe gathering information. "White will be able to stop it," Myungsoo says, though his voice wavers uncertainly. "He made the last one go back to where it came from."
There's a big crash, and Myungsoo looks up to see the alien on the ground, wrestling with someone Myungsoo's never seen before. He's dressed in a sky-blue suit and has a blue mask over his face. Even the shock of hair on his head is blue. While the alien is distracted, Hoya and Sungjong finally push the glass wall back into place.
The alien manages to overpower the man in blue and prepares to move again, but then it freezes in position. A look of confusion crosses its face, and it hisses in anger, while all of its limbs stay stuck in place. Myungsoo spots another tall person in blue walking toward the alien, holding out his hands in the alien's direction. He's also wearing a mask that covers most of his face, and has a metal collar around his neck.
"Good work, kids," comes a voice from behind the Infinite team. They all turn to see a silver-haired man in blue with heavy black paint around his eyes. Standing next to him is a huge robot with horns and a grim expression set on its face, its entire body the same shiny blue as the glass of the GS Tower. Seeing the Infinite members turn, the man laughs lightly and says, "Not you kids, our kids."
"What is all this?" Sunggyu demands, running up to the scene. "Who are you?"
"And what's with those outfits?" Hoya murmurs.
The silver-haired man bows to Sunggyu, and the robot mutely follows suit. "We finally meet, Infinite White," the man says. "I am N, and this is Rovix. We are VIXX, Valour, Victory, Virtue In Excelsis."
"That doesn't even spell VIXX," says Sungyeol.
N's yellow eyes flash at him. "Excuse me," he says primly, and he continues toward where the alien has been immobilized.
"Hey, you can't interfere," Sunggyu says. "We need to ask them something-" But before he can go on, the robot Rovix grabs his arms and lifts him so his struggling feet are slightly off the ground. Hoya shouts and immediately runs over to help their leader, but something about the robot's exterior repels him backwards, and Sungyeol's fire too.
N has a short, pointed stick in one hand, and he lifts it sharply to the alien's throat. "Tell me what they sent you here to do," he says in a melodic voice, staring into its eyes.
The alien struggles in its invisible bonds, but replies without hesitation. "Destroy the tall buildings, Tao," it says. "Draw them out."
"Hmm. Your name is Tao?"
"N hyung," says the man with his hands pointed at the alien, sounding strained. He's shaking from having to sustain his power for this long.
N ignores him. "Tell me who sent you." Tao hisses and its eyes dart towards Myungsoo, and Myungsoo instinctively flinches away, even though his face is covered. "Tell me-"
The man with the freezing power cries out and falls onto his hands and knees, panting. N snaps out of his trance and runs to him. Rovix drops Sunggyu, and goes to help the blue-haired man try to grapple with Tao again, but they can't grab it before a portal appears close to the ground.
"Return the Black Pearl," the alien hisses, before it slips through and the portal seals shut.
* * *
Predictably, Sunggyu is not happy about how the latest encounter with the EXO aliens went. "We could've asked about the Black Pearl if those people hadn't made a mess of it," he grouses from his place on the floor of their Mangwon-dong headquarters. "Who do they think they are, grabbing us like that?" This is their regular post-mission lunchtime meeting. They're supposed to be talking about the aliens and planning their next move, but their run-in with the VIXX team hangs like a heavy cloud over all of them.
That morning, Myungsoo had been chewed out by his boss at the Daily for losing his camera, with only a grudging acknowledgement of the circumstances. Luckily, the intern who drove him there had snapped some pictures on her phone, and that's what had ended up online and in the paper. Infinite was visible in some of the photos, but the main focus was on the team dressed in blue and chrome. Netizens were in a frenzy speculating over who this new superhero team could be, and none of Infinite had missed the more pointed comments directed at them: "used-up", "irrelevant", "Flashman cosplayers". Even the fact that the other team was tall had been turned into a point against Infinite.
"You're the only one who got grabbed," Woohyun says, returning to the main room from the kitchen and taking a seat on the floor beside Sungjong. "And they did actually catch it. Maybe it would've been worse if they hadn't showed up."
"They could be aliens too," Myungsoo suggests. "Remember that guy's yellow eyes?"
Sungyeol snorts. "His yellow contact lenses, you mean."
Dongwoo takes a seat on Sunggyu's stomach, and Sunggyu wheezes loudly. "As long as they're on our side, right?" he says, ignoring Sunggyu's fists pummelling weakly against the sides of his legs.
"I dunno," says Hoya. "I don't like how those yellow contact lenses were looking at us."
"And that weird robot," Sungjong adds.
"Are you kidding?" Sungyeol gapes at him. "The robot was so cool! Hey, Sunggyu hyung, that's what we need. A robot!"
"Yeah!" Dongwoo laughs, bouncing on Sunggyu's stomach. Sunggyu sighs and lies back, resigned to his fate.
Truthfully, the new problem is a welcome distraction for Infinite. It's been two weeks since the alien Kai first arrived from EXO Planet in the middle of the National Museum, severely damaging the statuary in the atrium and terrifying tourists and groups of school children. Kai hadn't done much attacking, though. Instead it had ransacked the museum and archives, using its teleportation power to travel through the building. Infinite had finally cornered it with a combination of Dongwoo's heightened senses, Myungsoo's own teleportation ability, and Woohyun's speed. But when Sunggyu had put his hands on it, trying to probe its mind, all he'd been able to get was its name and Black Pearl before Kai opened a portal to its planet and disappeared.
In the year and a half since the seven of them first received their powers, this is the biggest challenge they've faced yet. Before, all they'd needed to handle were extortionist thugs and school bullies. That was how they'd made their name, and the public had generally been more grateful than scared of the mysterious colour-coded team with abnormal, un-human abilities. (The costumes had been Sungyeol's idea, since he'd read the most American comics, but the others had all liked the concept enough to agree.) The arrival of the superpowered EXO aliens should have been a chance to battle someone with equal strength for once, more on the scale of what they'd imagined when they first decided to use their powers for good. But they'd imagined winning over evil. Instead, they keep losing, with no end in sight.
Maybe the netizens are right: Infinite is out of their league with this one.
Myungsoo's cell phone vibrates. It's a message from his coworker Jiae, who works in the news department. Where did you go? There's someone here to see you~ "I have to get back to the office," he tells the others.
The situation on the floor has turned into a full pile-on, with only Sunggyu's legs visible beneath a jumble of five bodies. Sungyeol waves to Myungsoo from his place atop the pile. "See if anyone has information about the robot," he says, and a groan comes from somewhere beneath him.
Myungsoo laughs. "I will." Then he shuts his eyes and teleports.
He reappears in Euljiro, under a bridge on the Cheonggyecheon. After he's made sure no one has seen him, he makes his way up to street level and back to the Woollim Daily office, eight floors up.
"Oh, Mr. Kim," says Boseung, one of the interns, as Myungsoo walks through the glass doors. A man sitting in the reception area stands up too, and Myungsoo recognizes him right away as the university student from the day before. He doesn't look nearly as surprised to see Myungsoo as Myungsoo is surprised to see him.
"Hello, Mr. Kim," he says, bowing, and Myungsoo returns the gesture. "I'm Lee Hongbin. We met yesterday."
"I remember."
There's a Canon DSLR in his hands, which he holds out to Myungsoo. "I came to return your camera. You left it at the, uh..."
Myungsoo looks at the camera, then at Hongbin's bowed head. "Oh, yeah. I had to leave pretty fast. It's broken, anyway."
"Yes, I got it fixed," Hongbin replies. "I thought you might miss it." He looks around the office's reception area. "Especially now that I know that you need it."
"Yeah, kind of."
"Well, it's good to see you in one piece." Hongbin smiles lopsidedly, showing a dimple. "I looked for you after everything died down, but I couldn't find you."
"You did?" Myungsoo says, more shrilly than he means to. He coughs. "Um, you too. I mean, I'm glad that you didn't get hurt or anything."
There's a short silence between them, and then Hongbin shifts and holds out the camera again, and Myungsoo remembers that's what he's here for. Myungsoo's hands are sweaty, and he has to tighten his grip on the camera's strap as he takes it from Hongbin so it doesn't fall onto the floor again - that's the last thing he needs. He inspects it quickly: the lens is missing, but otherwise, the body looks almost better than it did before, without even a scratch. He would suspect that Hongbin had just bought a new one if the Property of Woollim Daily sticker weren't still stuck to the camera's underside.
"Wow, where did you get this done?" Myungsoo asks. He loops the camera's strap around his neck, and this time, the weight is an immediate relief. "Wasn't it expensive?"
Hongbin shrugs modestly. "It didn't cost anything. I did it myself. I like working with cameras, so I had some spare parts lying around."
"What?" Myungsoo gapes at Hongbin. With that beautifully proportioned face, he looks like he wouldn't need to tie his own shoelaces, let alone know how to repair a digital camera. "How much do I owe you then? I would've had to buy a new one anyway, so I should at least..."
"No, no, it's okay. Besides, you saved my life yesterday." Hongbin tilts his head to one side. "Well, I would like to know more about your work. Are you free for dinner?" The blood rushes into Myungsoo's face, and he stumbles forward a little with the weight of the camera. Hongbin doesn't comment, just smiles sweetly. His eyes are so bright. "What time do you finish today?"
Myungsoo's smiling too, so much that he wishes he could stop because his cheeks hurt. "Usually around seven or eight o'clock. That might be too late."
"It's fine, my work is close to here. Uh, how about this." Hongbin digs around in his pockets and comes up with a cell phone. "Can I add you? You can just send me a message when you're done and I'll come meet you."
Flustered, Myungsoo puts his KakaoTalk name into Hongbin's phone, and hands it back. Just before Hongbin pushes open the door to leave, he stammers, "Myungsoo. My name is Kim Myungsoo."
Hongbin turns around. "See you tonight, Kim Myungsoo," he says. He flashes that brilliant grin one more time before he leaves. Myungsoo doesn't dare check his phone until he gets back to his desk. When he finally reads the notification - RedBeans93 has added you - his heart jumps a little in his chest, and he bites down on his smile and adds him back.
Myungsoo spends the rest of his afternoon uploading and editing the photos from his newly recovered camera. His priority is cleaning up some shots of a neighbourhood market for a profile that's running tomorrow, but he can't stop clicking back every few minutes to the ones from the GS Tower attack. The shattered glass and clouds of concrete dust hang in the air mid-spill; the faces of the civilians gathered around the site and rushing away from it are frozen in shock and horror. He'd heard from one of VIXX that Tao's power had to do with controlling time, which is how it was able to go from place to place so quickly, and why the rest of them kept feeling tiny stoppages. He wonders if this is the way Tao saw their world: suspended, meaningless piles of pixels.
He manages to get through the profile shots and submit them before the cut-off time, and by 7:00, even the photo department's head editor is done for the day. Myungsoo sends Hongbin a message to let him know he's leaving. On his way out he passes the news department, and he stops when he sees Jiae is at her desk, discreetly tapping at her phone.
"Still here?" he says, and Jiae starts and almost drops her phone in her scramble to shut it off. When she sees it's just Myungsoo, she makes a face, and he laughs.
"Still here," she replies. "The CEO of GS Group is supposed to make a statement about the alien attack, so we're waiting for that to come in." She slumps forward, hooking her chin over the edge of her desk. "What did that guy from earlier want?"
"Oh, I dropped my camera yesterday when I was out but he fixed it. I'm going to meet him now." Myungsoo checks his phone, but there's no response from Hongbin.
"You met him at the GS Tower? Is he an alien?"
Her words remind Myungsoo of what he'd said in Infinite's lunchtime meeting earlier, and his brain stalls for a moment, before he shakes it off. Just a coincidence. "An alien with KakaoTalk?"
"Why wouldn't an alien use KakaoTalk? No human could be that good-looking. He's an alien for sure." She sighs and smiles at Myungsoo, rotating her head onto its side. "You should go while you still can. Maybe think of me a little, trapped in here while you two handsome guys are eating real food." Myungsoo grins, and makes a mental note to bring a vitamin drink for Jiae tomorrow.
Hongbin still hasn't read his message by the time he's made it to the lobby of his office building. Myungsoo thinks of calling him, then hesitates. It's only been a few minutes, and maybe Hongbin is working late, too. There's a convenience store down the street; he could buy Jiae that vitamin drink now, while he's waiting.
He makes his way to the convenience store, intermittently checking his phone. When he's a few blocks away from the office, he notices there's a cat sitting on the sidewalk in front of him, watching him. It's noticeably large, but not plump, with sleek, blue-grey fur and dark eyes. Myungsoo squats down and strokes its soft head. It doesn't shy away, but nuzzles up into his hand. "So pretty," Myungsoo murmurs.
With his free hand, he opens his phone camera to take a picture, and that's when the cat bats the phone out of his hand, then picks it up in its mouth and takes off. "Hey!" Myungsoo yells. He looks around for help, but realizes he has no choice but to run after it. "Bring that back!"
The cat keeps running until it disappears around a corner between two buildings. When Myungsoo follows it around the corner, his phone is lying on the gravel. He crouches and picks it up, but freezes when he hears a footstep in front of him.
It's not the cat. Instead, at the blind end of the lane is a tall, broad-shouldered man with long black hair and tattoos of feathers drawn all up his arms. He's dressed in a blue suit, with a mask covering the bottom half of his face. Myungsoo recognizes that shade of blue, and his mouth goes dry.
He stands up, and starts to walk backwards out of the lane. "I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't mean to come here."
"Don't walk away," says a melodic voice, and N emerges from the shadows behind the tattooed man, yellow eyes glowing in their black paint. Quickly, Myungsoo opens his phone to Infinite's group chat and stabs in a message as best as he can, until he hears N say, "Put the phone down." No, Myungsoo thinks, but his hands still drop his phone back onto the gravel on their own.
"What do you want from me?" he asks.
N chuckles. "Don't be afraid," he says in his normal voice, as he walks closer to Myungsoo, swinging his short staff from one hand. "We saw you at the GS Tower yesterday. We're just going to ask a few questions."
Myungsoo squirms, but his legs won't move from where he's standing, no matter how hard he tries to tense his muscles. Don't walk away, N had said. Maybe teleporting would work, but that would only make VIXX more suspicious of him, if not give him away entirely. "Questions about what?"
N stops in front of Myungsoo, and his voice goes soft and musical. "Tell me your relationship to the aliens."
Myungsoo's chest grows tight with panic, but he can't stop the words that leave his mouth automatically. "No relationship. We're just trying to figure out what they're looking for."
"Ah. What are they looking for?" When Myungsoo doesn't respond immediately, N hums impatiently, shaking his head. "That's not it," he mutters to himself. More clearly, he repeats, "Tell me what they're looking for."
Myungsoo squeezes his eyes shut. "They're looking for the Black Pearl, but we don't know what the Black Pearl is."
"And who's-" N catches himself this time. "Tell me who you're searching with."
There's sweat trickling down Myungsoo's temple and the back of his neck, and a stinging sensation in his eyes and nose. He sniffles and pinches his face tight. "Infinite."
"That's us," comes Hoya's voice from behind Myungsoo. A red blur flashes by and Woohyun punches N in the jaw, sending him reeling backwards.
N wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "Ah, your friends are here," he says to Myungsoo.
"So this is what VIXX does," Woohyun says. "Bullies defenseless civilians." N picks up his staff to strike Woohyun with it, but Woohyun stops the swing in midair and jabs N in the gut. The tattooed man jumps out at Woohyun, turning into a dark blue-furred panther mid-leap, and Hoya jumps in, too.
Myungsoo stands back, thinking of ways he can help them and coming up blank. He spots his phone on the ground and picks it up. There's a message from Hongbin: Hi Kim Myungsoo! Sorry, but work is keeping me late and I won't be able to make it tonight. Are you free tomorrow? Really sorry again. The message seems to have been sent around 6:00. Myungsoo wonders how he could have missed it.
A rushing breeze blows gravel into Myungsoo's face, and makes the four who are fighting stop in their positions. "N hyung!" yells the masked man in blue who appears at the end of the alley. "It's time to go, come on!"
N grunts, shoving Woohyun away. The panther doesn't follow. "Leo hyung, you too," says the masked man. Growling, the panther gallops to him, shifting briefly to human before turning back into the grey cat Myungsoo had seen earlier. The masked man scoops him up and puts him around his neck with one hand, and holds on to N with the other. Then he bends his knees and jumps up into the sky, blasting the gravel where he had been standing into perfect concentric circles.
Woohyun helps pull Myungsoo to his feet and dusts him off. "What was that all about?" he asks.
"I don't know," Myungsoo replies. "They were asking me about the aliens."
Hoya frowns as he's brushing dust off the arms of his costume. "What did you tell them?"
"About the Black Pearl, and about Infinite." Myungsoo looks between Hoya and Woohyun. "But I guess they'd have figured that out anyway."
"So much for them being on our side."
"Is there any way you can stay home from work tomorrow?" Woohyun asks. "You can stay at the headquarters with Sunggyu. It's obviously not safe for you around here."
"Especially for a defenseless civilian," Myungsoo adds before he can stop himself.
"Hey, I was just trying to keep your cover," Woohyun replies. Then he puts his arm around Myungsoo's back and pulls him in for a side hug. Myungsoo rests his head on top of Woohyun's. "I'm a defenseless civilian too, that's why I wear a red bodysuit. The only reason why I wear a red bodysuit, by the way."
"You shouldn't take anything Red says seriously anyway," says Hoya, and Woohyun attempts to kick him with one leg, but Hoya bends out of his reach.
"I think we should get going," Woohyun says. "And I mean you and me, Boradori can find his own way home." This time it's Hoya who attempts to kick Woohyun, but Woohyun zips from one side of Myungsoo to the other, out of his reach.
"All right," Myungsoo says, and he holds out his hand to Hoya. Hoya takes it, and Myungsoo closes his eyes and teleports them back to headquarters.
* * *
The next evening, Myungsoo meets Lee Hongbin at a kimchi jjigae restaurant near Gwanghwamun. The restaurant is poorly lit inside, and the only seating is two long wooden tables and benches. Hongbin is the only customer there when Myungsoo walks in. He's frowning at something on his phone, but when Myungsoo greets him he looks up and smiles widely.
"Kim Myungsoo," he says. "Sorry again about yesterday. I didn't want it to happen, but my boss is kind of pushy."
"I understand. Seven is usually an early night for me, too."
Hongbin smiles, but he casts his eyes downward. Before Myungsoo can ask what's wrong, he hits his hands on the table and says, "So, shall we order? I'm hungry."
After they decide on what to get in their stew and place their order, they fall silent. Each of them tries to say something once, before breaking off into awkward laughter.
Finally, when the man working that day brings their side dishes, Myungsoo says, "What were you doing that day at the tower? You were taking pictures."
Hongbin laughs. "I didn't know how to ask you that, either."
Myungsoo presses the tips of his chopsticks against his lower lip. "Is it secret?"
"No, it's fine. It's just kind of weird. But... Lately, I'm really interested in outer space. And with all these aliens coming from I don't know where..."
"EXO Planet," says Myungsoo, before he can stop himself. Hongbin tilts his head, and Myungsoo adds quickly, "One of the writers who's been covering this, he said that's where they're from."
"Does he know why the aliens are here?"
Myungsoo shakes his head. "He doesn't know."
"Ah." Hongbin doesn't press, and Myungsoo almost thanks him for it.
"I have a friend who's into aliens," he says. He thinks of Sungyeol flinging fireballs at Tao, and adds, "Or he used to be. But he just buys toy spaceships and stuff."
"Yeah, I know it was dangerous. But I wanted to see an alien up close, just once. I guess I got my wish." Hongbin chuckles awkwardly, and Myungsoo laughs, too. "Thank you again for saving me, really. I don't know how you got over there so fast."
"Well, um," Myungsoo stammers, his face growing hot. "I just... I saw you were in trouble. That's all."
"My hero," Hongbin says, beaming.
Myungsoo ducks his head down so Hongbin won't see that he's probably bright red. "You don't have to call me that."
He's saved when their stew arrives on the table. If nothing else, he can pretend his flush is just from the steam and the spice. "Is your work related to outer space?" he asks, trying to change the subject.
But Hongbin is more tenacious than he expected. "No, I work in a bookstore. I've only been interested in space for about a year," he says, as he blows on a spoonful of rice and cooked kimchi. "After that thing fell into the Han River. Did you hear about that?"
Myungsoo nearly chokes on his rice, and he drinks some water and fans his face with one hand. "Sorry, the food," he croaks. It's a weak excuse, but Hongbin nods along. "Yeah, I remember that."
He'd been taking pictures along the river that day; he wasn't a newspaper photographer yet, just a freelancer working on his portfolio. It was a beautiful day, just the beginning of spring. There had been a few wispy white clouds in the sky, and then one very long, solid one. Myungsoo hadn't even noticed it until it started getting closer and the blue sky started turning lighter, almost white. Then someone screamed to run for cover.
There had been seven people who hadn't run for cover. Six of them had come just to see what was happening. Hoya had been on his way to a dance audition when the sky lit up. Sungyeol and Dongwoo had seen the cloud through the window of their classroom. Sunggyu was on his way to his next job. Myungsoo just happened to be there.
The falling object impacted with the river about a kilometre away from them, and while it raised a big splash, that was all, and soon the sky returned to its normal colour. The most logical scientific explanation was an asteroid, but this conflicted with satellite photography, which showed the object to be smaller and much more dense. Most people in Seoul started referring to the event as the "falling star". There was a tense 2-month investigation into whether North Korea had performed a secret missile launch. Whatever fell into the river was never recovered; it was assumed to have dissolved, or been carried out to the ocean. Two days later, Myungsoo woke up wishing the convenience store wasn't so far away, and accidentally teleported for the first time.
"My friend..." Hongbin says, snapping Myungsoo out of his thoughts. "He has a theory that the aliens have something to do with that, that it's all connected."
"I don't know anything about that," Myungsoo replies, looking down into his bowl.
Another silence passes between them. Then Hongbin clicks his chopsticks together. "So, tell me what it's like working at a newspaper."
Tell me. N's yellow eyes flash in Myungsoo's mind for a moment, and a chill runs through him. But when he looks up it's to Hongbin's bright, handsome face, and he forces himself to relax. There's no reason for him to keep thinking about that part of his life if Hongbin isn't asking him about it. Hongbin isn't dangerous. He's just a stranger who wants to be Myungsoo's friend, just like Infinite were strangers that became his friends, and that's all.
* * *
The next EXO alien arrives two days later. This time the portal opens over the Han River, perilously close to the government buildings on Yeouido and only a few kilometres away from where the falling star landed in the water. Myungsoo's still on probation at work for the broken camera incident, so another photographer gets the assignment instead. It's meant to be a punishment, but in his head Myungsoo thanks his boss for letting him get away.
When he and the rest of Infinite arrive on the scene, they're immediately blasted back by a strong wind coming off the water. Even the police cars parked around the river barrier rock back and forth. "Let me guess what its power is," says Woohyun.
They spot Kai hovering over the river, watching the new alien it's brought to Earth send blasts of air at the civilians and emergency personnel gathered along the bank of the river. When Kai sees them, it immediately blinks out of sight, then reappears in front of them.
"Sehun," it calls, and its fellow alien stops blowing wind at the civilians, and instead propels itself towards Infinite. Hoya tenses up and Sungyeol gets ready to throw a blast at them, but Sunggyu holds out his hand, and steps forward.
"Hello, Kai," he says. When Kai growls in response, he holds up his gloved hands in a position of surrender. "Don't worry, I'm not going to do anything."
The alien named Sehun frowns. "Where's the Black Pearl?" it demands, in a low, drawling voice.
"We don't have what you're looking for," Sunggyu replies steadily. "And we've already told you, you're not going to find it by tearing apart our planet."
"Stop lying to us," Kai says. "We've traced its energy pattern here, to Seoul City. We know it's you." It tilts its head at Sunggyu. "Where are the others?"
Sunggyu does a quick head count to make sure. "This is all of us."
Kai tilts its head the other way and blinks its sleepy eyes. "Tao said there were more of you."
The Infinite members exchange a look. "Those guys weren't with us," Sungyeol pipes up. "They've got their own weird agenda."
"Look," Dongwoo says, just as a blue-suited man swoops down from the sky and hits Sehun feet-first, knocking it to the ground. Kai flickers briefly on the spot to get out of the flying man's way, and when it returns, Leo in panther form jumps on it with a paw at its throat.
The Infinite team immediately jumps into action. Their attacks are half directed at EXO, and half at VIXX. Woohyun and Hoya take on Leo again; Sungjong and his double fight the one with the time control power; Sungyeol tries to take out both Sehun and the one who flies, only to find his arms are paralyzed. In response, Dongwoo goes over to the VIXX member responsible and jumps on him.
Myungsoo stays where he is, not sure of what to do. When he sees N running towards them with the Rovix robot behind him, his blood runs cold.
"White!" he shouts, barely remembering to use Sunggyu's code name. He quickly teleports to get closer to where Sunggyu and Sehun are struggling on the ground. There are singed tufts of grass around them where Sungyeol's fireballs have landed, and soot streaks on Sunggyu's white costume.
Kai teleports over from the fight between Sungjong and the blue-haired VIXX member. "Stop this right now."
N strikes Kai across the head with the blunt end of his short staff, momentarily stunning it. "Tell me-" His voice is cut off by a blast of wind from Sehun that knocks him backwards, and Rovix lumbers forward to strike. Surprisingly, Kai manages to catch the robot's arm, and when it punches back, the robot seems rattled by the impact.
"Enough!" Kai shouts again. "Come with us." Sehun gets to its feet, and Sunggyu rises as well, but he doesn't look right. He's knocked out, Myungsoo realizes, and his movements are bound somehow by the air around Sehun. N is upright too, bound by the same spell.
"Wait," Myungsoo yells. He looks back at the others for help, but they can hardly get away from their battles with the other VIXX members. If only he were fast like Woohyun and Dongwoo, he thinks, or strong like Hoya and Sungjong, or smart like Sungyeol and Sunggyu. Then he could help.
Sehun is taking Sunggyu and N's bodies towards the river now, and Kai has opened a portal above the riverbank. It looks like a hexagonal cut-out in the air, with nothing but black on the other side. VIXX's robot is already heading towards it. Myungsoo doesn't know what else to do, so he runs too. He can't fight the aliens off, but maybe if he grabs Sunggyu in time, he can teleport them both to safety.
Rovix reaches the portal just before Myungsoo, and Myungsoo tries to bat the robot away as he jumps for Sunggyu. He closes his eyes and thinks about the furthest possible place they can get to, just before everything goes dark.
* * *
When Myungsoo wakes up, his mask is gone. That's the first thing he notices. The second thing he notices is that Sunggyu is next to him, with N and the robot on his other side, and the third thing he notices is that all four of them are strapped upright in some seriously uncomfortable chairs.
They're in a room with walls so white they're almost blue. The only things in the room are them, the chairs, and a simple table, decorated with a mirror and a few white flowers that look like orchids. The furniture is white, too. There are two aliens sitting behind the table, one on the side with the mirror and one on the side with the flowers. They're dressed in ornate white outfits - a contrast to the simple, dark clothes worn by the other aliens - and watching them with calm expressions.
A short alien with big, round eyes pulls off Sunggyu's mask. Sunggyu sighs when he sees Myungsoo beside him. "They got you too," he mumbles as he slouches into his bonds. "I'm sorry."
He has a defeated look on his face, and even if Myungsoo can't read minds like Sunggyu does, he can hear his voice: I should have protected you. "No," he says, with a force that surprises even himself, and Sunggyu looks up again. "I came because I wanted to protect you."
Sunggyu opens his mouth to reply. Then he closes it, and he gives Myungsoo the best smile he can manage. It's small, but it's real. "Thank you."
Next to him, N writhes as the wide-eyed alien tries to remove his mask, only to find he isn't wearing one. The alien glances at the big table, and the alien with the mirror raises a hand and blasts a jet of water at N's face that's strong enough to blast away the paint from around his eyes and leave his skin a little red. His eyes, Myungsoo notices, are still yellow.
Then the wide-eyed alien goes to Rovix. At first it just knocks on the robot's head, but Rovix is unresponsive. The alien glances back at the table, and says something Myungsoo doesn't understand. Then it clamps its hands on either side of Rovix's head, and yanks it off.
Inside the robot's head is Lee Hongbin.
Myungsoo gasps when he sees it, and Sunggyu looks at him with concern. Hongbin's eyes are white-blue, like the walls of the room they're in, but when he sees Myungsoo's similarly exposed face, he startles and his eyes turn dark again. His gaze falls towards the floor in front of Myungsoo, as if Myungsoo won't see him if he doesn't make eye contact. Myungsoo just keeps staring, unable to process the sight of Rovix's body with Hongbin's head sticking out of it.
The wide-eyed alien bows to the table and leaves the room. The two aliens behind the table briefly confer, before the one with the mirror stands and clears its throat. It's smiling, which is unexpected. Myungsoo doesn't think he's seen any of the EXO aliens smile. "I am Suho, and this is Lay," it says, gesturing to the alien with the flowers. "We're here to represent our planet's government, because we think there's been a bit of a misunderstanding."
N scoffs. "The part where you destroy our city looking for something that isn't there, or the part where you kidnap us?"
"Hey," says Lay, glaring at N. Suho puts its hand on Lay's shoulder, and Lay settles back in its seat.
"We're very sorry about that. It was our government's directive. It was the only way we were able to get in contact with you reliably."
"Destroying a building?" Sunggyu says, with an eyebrow raised.
"It would've been less trouble had the Black Pearl been was where we thought it was," Suho admits.
"They say they don't know what the Black Pearl is," Lay says to Suho.
"We don't," N says, but he closes his mouth when Lay glares at him again.
"Oh, right," says Suho. "The Black Pearl is an artifact that's sacred to our planet, and important to the way our government works. But recently, two members of our government decided to leave very suddenly."
"They took the Black Pearl," Lay says, cutting Suho off, "but they lost it somewhere as they were getting away. We were able to narrow down its energy pattern as much as Seoul City, but that was it. Until you showed up."
He's looking right at Sunggyu, and Myungsoo does too. "We showed up?" Sunggyu repeats.
"You created a telepathic link with Kai, and Kai recognized the energy signature. And then Tao met you"-it looks at N now-"and your energy was even stronger. Why do you think so many of your abilities are similar to ours? You got them from the Black Pearl. Maybe you don't know it, but you did."
Sunggyu's eyes are cast down in thought. Then he looks up, and his expression is calm. "Yes, I remember. It fell in the river."
N is quieter too, but he seems disturbed. "And what does this thing look like?" he asks the aliens.
Suho wipes a layer of water over its mirror, then holds its hand up in front of it. In the mirror, Suho's hand is holding a small, polygonal object, covered with geometrically arranged grooves. "The Starlight," Hongbin says, and N gives him a look Myungsoo can't see.
He clears his throat, and turns his face back to the two aliens. "We know where it is."
"So you can return it to us," Lay says. "Finally." It nods to Suho. "Let's go to Seoul City."
"Wait," says Sunggyu. "They return it, and what happens? You won't contact Earth again, right?"
Suho nods. "Yes. We no longer contact Earth, and we remove all traces of the Black Pearl's energy from your planet. I know this sounds like more destruction, but it's a simple, non-invasive process-"
"So we'll lose our powers," N says, and Myungsoo's eyes widen.
Suho blinks at him. "Yes."
N exchanges a look with Hongbin, then he leans as far forward as he can to look at Sunggyu. "How does Infinite feel about this?"
Sunggyu seems upset, but when he turns to look N in the eye, Myungsoo sees it's determination. "If this is what it takes to save the world, they'll just have to accept it."
His words make N's expression soften. He looks at Hongbin one more time before he nods to the aliens. "Okay. Let's save the world."
* * *
When they reappear through Kai's portal on the bank of the Han River, they're greeted by the army, who have their guns trained on the small group of aliens that accompany the four of them. "Don't shoot," N says as loud as he can, and Sehun uses the surrounding air to amplify the power of N's voice.
VIXX take care of the handover, accompanied by the group from EXO Planet and some military personnel for supervision. Meanwhile, Sunggyu and Myungsoo do their best to explain the situation to the rest of Infinite.
"I wish we'd had some warning," says Hoya.
"So do I," Sunggyu replies. "But it was the easiest way to stop this from happening."
"So what do we do now?" Sungjong asks.
Sunggyu shakes his head. "I don't know. We just go back to the way our lives were before."
"I still want all of you in my life," Dongwoo says, very seriously.
Myungsoo feels tears coming on, so he wanders away from the group. He gets as far as the river bank before he hears Sunggyu calling his name.
"Myungsoo," he says, and he runs up and stops in front of Myungsoo. "Thank you for coming with me, to meet the aliens. I'm glad you were there."
Myungsoo shrugs, and sniffles. Now he's really going to cry. "I couldn't do anything for you," he says. "I couldn't do anything for any of you."
Sunggyu pulls him into a hug. "You're one of us. Just being there is enough." He sighs. "And anyway, it doesn't really matter now."
They stay like that for a bit, with Myungsoo crying into Sunggyu's stained costume, until Myungsoo feels Sunggyu tense and shift away a bit, keeping one arm around Myungsoo's shoulders. Myungsoo turns his head to see Hongbin standing there, half in Rovix's body. He turns away.
"Go away," he says.
"Kim Myungsoo," says Hongbin. "I mean, Infinite Black. I mean..."
"I don't want to talk to you," Myungsoo says. "You lied to me."
"Look." Hongbin's voice sounds a little ragged too. "I'm sorry about... About everything. I didn't know the others were planning to corner you like that, and I didn't know you were Infinite, either. I was just supposed to get more information, but I really did want to see you again. I swear."
"You lied to me," Myungsoo says again. "And you hurt my friends. That's all I need to know."
"Myungsoo..."
Myungsoo closes his eyes and thinks, I just want to be with my friends. That's how this whole thing started: him closing his eyes, and thinking about being somewhere else. But when he opens his eyes, he's standing in the exact same place. The only difference is that Hongbin is gone.
* * *
Two weeks after they lose their powers, Infinite meet again at their headquarters in Mangwon-dong. Woohyun calls it their support group, and it's only half of a joke. Normal life is harder than Myungsoo had expected: he hadn't realized how much he used his powers until he no longer had them. There's a sort of sadness that hangs over all of them, and while getting together doesn't fix it, it at least lets them share it together.
"We've been superhero-ing again," Sungjong confesses at this meeting.
"Who's 'we'?" asks Sunggyu, and Sungjong nods at Hoya and Dongwoo on either side of him.
"What do you do without your powers, cute them to death?" says Sungyeol.
"Challenge them to a dance battle?" Woohyun offers.
"It's just small," Dongwoo says. "There was this old man that was going around bothering women in the neighbourhood. Some bully beating smaller kids up after school. Stuff like that."
"They think we're just regular people in costumes since Infinite is retired," Hoya says.
Woohyun snorts. "You are regular people in costumes," he says, and Hoya tries to kick him from across the floor.
Myungsoo checks his watch. He's only allowed so much time for his lunch break, and he's still not quite used to calculating travel times to and from places. "Can we go eat? I have to get back to work soon," he says. "Unlike the rest of you regular people in costumes."
That gets a laugh from Dongwoo, and Woohyun leaps up and puts his arms around Myungsoo. Myungsoo smiles, even as he tries to pry Woohyun's arm from around his neck.
They walk into their usual local restaurant, and on his way in, Myungsoo stops dead in his tracks. At one of the tables is Hongbin, and he's sitting between N, whose eyes are dark again, and a man whose narrow eyes look like Leo's.
Sunggyu bumps into him from behind. "Hey, what's up? Aren't you the one in a hurry?" he says. Myungsoo points, and Hongbin looks up from his food to see him and Sunggyu, and his eyes widen. "Come on," Sunggyu says, nudging Myungsoo. Then, more gently, he adds, "Whatever happened before, it's over now."
Myungsoo walks into the restaurant, but instead of joining the others, he walks up to VIXX's table. "Lee Hongbin," he says. His voice is shaking. "Don't ever lie to me again, okay?"
The others glance at Hongbin, but Hongbin just nods at Myungsoo. "I won't. And I will do whatever I can to make it up to you."
"Okay." Myungsoo turns to go, then stops, and turns around again. "I want to go to that kimchi jjigae restaurant again."
Hongbin's face lights up, and it feels like it's been forever since Myungsoo's last seen that smile. "Deal," he says.
"Oooh," coo two of the others sitting at his table, and N raises an eyebrow at Hongbin and elbows him. Sungyeol applauds when Myungsoo sits down with Infinite again, and Myungsoo blushes, but he's still smiling. Maybe normal life won't be so bad after all.
infinite + vixx, myungsoo/hongbin
pg (violence), 8,609w
kim myungsoo, a.k.a. infinite black, has a lot to deal with: his civilian job at the woollim daily newspaper, an upstart group of superheroes (and one robot) that's threatening to make his beloved team irrelevant, and a tall, mysterious man with a camera and a killer smile. oh yeah, and those exo aliens that keep trying to destroy seoul.
--written for ifntvalentine 2016.
By the time Myungsoo arrives on the scene in Gangnam, the EXO alien is already through the portal and is doing high kicks through the side of the GS Tower, sending glass crashing to the ground and civilians scrambling for cover. The teleporting alien named Kai is nowhere to be seen - it's probably made it back to its home planet by now, ready to bring another one of its fellow aliens through the portal in pursuit of what they called the "Black Pearl". The police are on the scene to evacuate the building, and there's a small, makeshift barrier around the front entrance.
Myungsoo curses softly, feeling the full weight of the DSLR camera around his neck. Once the news alert had come in of the third alien attack in two weeks, he had hoped to sneak off before his boss could assign him to cover it. But he had been caught in the hallway, and he couldn't very well teleport out of the Woollim Daily office in full sight of his coworkers, nor once one of the newspaper's interns had been forced to drive him to the scene. In the car, he'd quietly sent a distress signal to the others, but no one has responded to it yet.
His heart is racing and his mouth is dry, but Sunggyu always insists Myungsoo's position at the Daily is too valuable to sacrifice, so he takes the lens cover off his camera and snaps a few shots for the sake of keeping his cover. Just a few photos, he thinks, until the others arrive. Then he can put on his costume and teleport directly into the scene and join them.
As he zooms in closer on the wreckage, he sees someone else taking photos much closer to it, a tall guy with wavy red-brown hair. He's probably not a journalist; he has no press credentials around his neck, and anyway, Myungsoo's never seen him before. Probably just a university student. A police officer behind him is frantically gesturing for him to get out of the way, but the student pays no attention, just adjusts the setting on his camera and takes another shot.
There's a loud cracking noise as the alien takes another kick at the tower. Myungsoo looks up from his viewfinder and sees a broken piece of concrete falling in the direction of the university student. His heart leaps, and his mind goes blank. He looks around for help, but everyone else looks just as stunned as him. It's a bad idea to use his powers in public like this, even if no one's looking at him, but he has no other choice. Sorry, Sunggyu, he thinks, and he teleports.
He reappears across the street under the building and tackles the student out of the way, just as the concrete beam smashes into the ground, bringing up a cloud of dust. Myungsoo coughs, waving it out of his face. "Are you okay?" he asks.
The university student is staring at where the beam landed, eyes huge with shock. He's handsome, and when he looks up at Myungsoo, Myungsoo's stomach jolts involuntarily. "You saved me," he says.
"Yeah," Myungsoo replies. The student doesn't say anything more, just stares at him. Myungsoo realizes he's still cradling him and lets go, almost dropping him on the ground. "Sorry."
"No, it's okay, I-"
Suddenly the alien is standing over them, and Myungsoo's camera is no longer around his neck, but smashed on the ground. "No pictures, oppa," the alien hisses at Myungsoo.
The university student gets up and pulls Myungsoo up with him. "Come on!" he says. When Myungsoo doesn't move, the other man grabs his hand and pulls him along until he's running too. But once they've gotten a few metres away, the alien reappears in front of them.
"Another teleporter," Myungsoo blurts out. The student looks at him quizzically.
There's a loud flash of fire at the alien's leg. It roars and whirls around, and Myungsoo sees Sungyeol running up from behind, dressed in his costume as Infinite Pink. The alien prepares to charge, but Sungyeol sends another fireball at it, and it vanishes.
The others have arrived too, and Sunggyu stops when he sees Myungsoo. "Are you okay?" he asks through the white mask covering his face. "Go," he tells the others, when they stop to check on Myungsoo as well, and the five of them continue running toward where the alien has resumed attacking the building.
"You go too," Myungsoo says. "I need to..." He looks around, but the university student is gone.
"Come on," Sunggyu says. "How do you feel?"
He puts the back of one hand against Myungsoo's face. He's taken his gloves off, and the brain-to-brain link created through his touch helps put Myungsoo's mind back in order. "I'm all right."
They duck into an alley behind the building. Sunggyu guards the entrance while Myungsoo pulls on his costume. "Do you know what its power is?" Sunggyu asks.
"I think it's teleportation."
Sunggyu groans. "Great, another one. I hope Green can sniff it out again."
Myungsoo comes out of the alleyway, now fully in costume as Infinite Black. "I'm ready."
Sunggyu offers his gloved hand. "Then let's go." Holding his hand, Myungsoo closes his eyes, and teleports the two of them together.
They reappear at the foot of the GS Tower, among the civilians rushing out of the building to safety. A few metres away from them, he spots Hoya's purple suit. Hoya's struggling to keep up a wall of glass, along with Sungjong and his yellow-suited duplicate. It looks like it keeps slipping back a little every time the three of them push it up, as if something is interfering with their progress. Meanwhile, Woohyun is a red blur around the site. He's obviously chasing something, but his patterns of movement are erratic and keep stopping and starting. There's a few scorch marks on the sidewalk where Sungyeol's blasts have missed their target.
Dongwoo is escorting a woman towards the evacuation zone, carrying her broken high heels in one hand. Once she's made it to safety, he spots Myungsoo, and the parts of his face visible behind his green mask light up. "Black, you made it!" he shouts. "I was worried about you."
"Looks like you were doing okay without me," Myungsoo replies, looking around. There's a rumbling followed by screaming, as the alien takes out another section of the tower's ground floor. "Sort of."
Dongwoo shakes his head. "This one is really weird," he says. "The air keeps changing the way it smells."
Myungsoo glances to where Sunggyu is kneeling in the evacuation zone. His eyes are closed and his hands are on a man's head, maybe soothing him, or maybe gathering information. "White will be able to stop it," Myungsoo says, though his voice wavers uncertainly. "He made the last one go back to where it came from."
There's a big crash, and Myungsoo looks up to see the alien on the ground, wrestling with someone Myungsoo's never seen before. He's dressed in a sky-blue suit and has a blue mask over his face. Even the shock of hair on his head is blue. While the alien is distracted, Hoya and Sungjong finally push the glass wall back into place.
The alien manages to overpower the man in blue and prepares to move again, but then it freezes in position. A look of confusion crosses its face, and it hisses in anger, while all of its limbs stay stuck in place. Myungsoo spots another tall person in blue walking toward the alien, holding out his hands in the alien's direction. He's also wearing a mask that covers most of his face, and has a metal collar around his neck.
"Good work, kids," comes a voice from behind the Infinite team. They all turn to see a silver-haired man in blue with heavy black paint around his eyes. Standing next to him is a huge robot with horns and a grim expression set on its face, its entire body the same shiny blue as the glass of the GS Tower. Seeing the Infinite members turn, the man laughs lightly and says, "Not you kids, our kids."
"What is all this?" Sunggyu demands, running up to the scene. "Who are you?"
"And what's with those outfits?" Hoya murmurs.
The silver-haired man bows to Sunggyu, and the robot mutely follows suit. "We finally meet, Infinite White," the man says. "I am N, and this is Rovix. We are VIXX, Valour, Victory, Virtue In Excelsis."
"That doesn't even spell VIXX," says Sungyeol.
N's yellow eyes flash at him. "Excuse me," he says primly, and he continues toward where the alien has been immobilized.
"Hey, you can't interfere," Sunggyu says. "We need to ask them something-" But before he can go on, the robot Rovix grabs his arms and lifts him so his struggling feet are slightly off the ground. Hoya shouts and immediately runs over to help their leader, but something about the robot's exterior repels him backwards, and Sungyeol's fire too.
N has a short, pointed stick in one hand, and he lifts it sharply to the alien's throat. "Tell me what they sent you here to do," he says in a melodic voice, staring into its eyes.
The alien struggles in its invisible bonds, but replies without hesitation. "Destroy the tall buildings, Tao," it says. "Draw them out."
"Hmm. Your name is Tao?"
"N hyung," says the man with his hands pointed at the alien, sounding strained. He's shaking from having to sustain his power for this long.
N ignores him. "Tell me who sent you." Tao hisses and its eyes dart towards Myungsoo, and Myungsoo instinctively flinches away, even though his face is covered. "Tell me-"
The man with the freezing power cries out and falls onto his hands and knees, panting. N snaps out of his trance and runs to him. Rovix drops Sunggyu, and goes to help the blue-haired man try to grapple with Tao again, but they can't grab it before a portal appears close to the ground.
"Return the Black Pearl," the alien hisses, before it slips through and the portal seals shut.
* * *
Predictably, Sunggyu is not happy about how the latest encounter with the EXO aliens went. "We could've asked about the Black Pearl if those people hadn't made a mess of it," he grouses from his place on the floor of their Mangwon-dong headquarters. "Who do they think they are, grabbing us like that?" This is their regular post-mission lunchtime meeting. They're supposed to be talking about the aliens and planning their next move, but their run-in with the VIXX team hangs like a heavy cloud over all of them.
That morning, Myungsoo had been chewed out by his boss at the Daily for losing his camera, with only a grudging acknowledgement of the circumstances. Luckily, the intern who drove him there had snapped some pictures on her phone, and that's what had ended up online and in the paper. Infinite was visible in some of the photos, but the main focus was on the team dressed in blue and chrome. Netizens were in a frenzy speculating over who this new superhero team could be, and none of Infinite had missed the more pointed comments directed at them: "used-up", "irrelevant", "Flashman cosplayers". Even the fact that the other team was tall had been turned into a point against Infinite.
"You're the only one who got grabbed," Woohyun says, returning to the main room from the kitchen and taking a seat on the floor beside Sungjong. "And they did actually catch it. Maybe it would've been worse if they hadn't showed up."
"They could be aliens too," Myungsoo suggests. "Remember that guy's yellow eyes?"
Sungyeol snorts. "His yellow contact lenses, you mean."
Dongwoo takes a seat on Sunggyu's stomach, and Sunggyu wheezes loudly. "As long as they're on our side, right?" he says, ignoring Sunggyu's fists pummelling weakly against the sides of his legs.
"I dunno," says Hoya. "I don't like how those yellow contact lenses were looking at us."
"And that weird robot," Sungjong adds.
"Are you kidding?" Sungyeol gapes at him. "The robot was so cool! Hey, Sunggyu hyung, that's what we need. A robot!"
"Yeah!" Dongwoo laughs, bouncing on Sunggyu's stomach. Sunggyu sighs and lies back, resigned to his fate.
Truthfully, the new problem is a welcome distraction for Infinite. It's been two weeks since the alien Kai first arrived from EXO Planet in the middle of the National Museum, severely damaging the statuary in the atrium and terrifying tourists and groups of school children. Kai hadn't done much attacking, though. Instead it had ransacked the museum and archives, using its teleportation power to travel through the building. Infinite had finally cornered it with a combination of Dongwoo's heightened senses, Myungsoo's own teleportation ability, and Woohyun's speed. But when Sunggyu had put his hands on it, trying to probe its mind, all he'd been able to get was its name and Black Pearl before Kai opened a portal to its planet and disappeared.
In the year and a half since the seven of them first received their powers, this is the biggest challenge they've faced yet. Before, all they'd needed to handle were extortionist thugs and school bullies. That was how they'd made their name, and the public had generally been more grateful than scared of the mysterious colour-coded team with abnormal, un-human abilities. (The costumes had been Sungyeol's idea, since he'd read the most American comics, but the others had all liked the concept enough to agree.) The arrival of the superpowered EXO aliens should have been a chance to battle someone with equal strength for once, more on the scale of what they'd imagined when they first decided to use their powers for good. But they'd imagined winning over evil. Instead, they keep losing, with no end in sight.
Maybe the netizens are right: Infinite is out of their league with this one.
Myungsoo's cell phone vibrates. It's a message from his coworker Jiae, who works in the news department. Where did you go? There's someone here to see you~ "I have to get back to the office," he tells the others.
The situation on the floor has turned into a full pile-on, with only Sunggyu's legs visible beneath a jumble of five bodies. Sungyeol waves to Myungsoo from his place atop the pile. "See if anyone has information about the robot," he says, and a groan comes from somewhere beneath him.
Myungsoo laughs. "I will." Then he shuts his eyes and teleports.
He reappears in Euljiro, under a bridge on the Cheonggyecheon. After he's made sure no one has seen him, he makes his way up to street level and back to the Woollim Daily office, eight floors up.
"Oh, Mr. Kim," says Boseung, one of the interns, as Myungsoo walks through the glass doors. A man sitting in the reception area stands up too, and Myungsoo recognizes him right away as the university student from the day before. He doesn't look nearly as surprised to see Myungsoo as Myungsoo is surprised to see him.
"Hello, Mr. Kim," he says, bowing, and Myungsoo returns the gesture. "I'm Lee Hongbin. We met yesterday."
"I remember."
There's a Canon DSLR in his hands, which he holds out to Myungsoo. "I came to return your camera. You left it at the, uh..."
Myungsoo looks at the camera, then at Hongbin's bowed head. "Oh, yeah. I had to leave pretty fast. It's broken, anyway."
"Yes, I got it fixed," Hongbin replies. "I thought you might miss it." He looks around the office's reception area. "Especially now that I know that you need it."
"Yeah, kind of."
"Well, it's good to see you in one piece." Hongbin smiles lopsidedly, showing a dimple. "I looked for you after everything died down, but I couldn't find you."
"You did?" Myungsoo says, more shrilly than he means to. He coughs. "Um, you too. I mean, I'm glad that you didn't get hurt or anything."
There's a short silence between them, and then Hongbin shifts and holds out the camera again, and Myungsoo remembers that's what he's here for. Myungsoo's hands are sweaty, and he has to tighten his grip on the camera's strap as he takes it from Hongbin so it doesn't fall onto the floor again - that's the last thing he needs. He inspects it quickly: the lens is missing, but otherwise, the body looks almost better than it did before, without even a scratch. He would suspect that Hongbin had just bought a new one if the Property of Woollim Daily sticker weren't still stuck to the camera's underside.
"Wow, where did you get this done?" Myungsoo asks. He loops the camera's strap around his neck, and this time, the weight is an immediate relief. "Wasn't it expensive?"
Hongbin shrugs modestly. "It didn't cost anything. I did it myself. I like working with cameras, so I had some spare parts lying around."
"What?" Myungsoo gapes at Hongbin. With that beautifully proportioned face, he looks like he wouldn't need to tie his own shoelaces, let alone know how to repair a digital camera. "How much do I owe you then? I would've had to buy a new one anyway, so I should at least..."
"No, no, it's okay. Besides, you saved my life yesterday." Hongbin tilts his head to one side. "Well, I would like to know more about your work. Are you free for dinner?" The blood rushes into Myungsoo's face, and he stumbles forward a little with the weight of the camera. Hongbin doesn't comment, just smiles sweetly. His eyes are so bright. "What time do you finish today?"
Myungsoo's smiling too, so much that he wishes he could stop because his cheeks hurt. "Usually around seven or eight o'clock. That might be too late."
"It's fine, my work is close to here. Uh, how about this." Hongbin digs around in his pockets and comes up with a cell phone. "Can I add you? You can just send me a message when you're done and I'll come meet you."
Flustered, Myungsoo puts his KakaoTalk name into Hongbin's phone, and hands it back. Just before Hongbin pushes open the door to leave, he stammers, "Myungsoo. My name is Kim Myungsoo."
Hongbin turns around. "See you tonight, Kim Myungsoo," he says. He flashes that brilliant grin one more time before he leaves. Myungsoo doesn't dare check his phone until he gets back to his desk. When he finally reads the notification - RedBeans93 has added you - his heart jumps a little in his chest, and he bites down on his smile and adds him back.
Myungsoo spends the rest of his afternoon uploading and editing the photos from his newly recovered camera. His priority is cleaning up some shots of a neighbourhood market for a profile that's running tomorrow, but he can't stop clicking back every few minutes to the ones from the GS Tower attack. The shattered glass and clouds of concrete dust hang in the air mid-spill; the faces of the civilians gathered around the site and rushing away from it are frozen in shock and horror. He'd heard from one of VIXX that Tao's power had to do with controlling time, which is how it was able to go from place to place so quickly, and why the rest of them kept feeling tiny stoppages. He wonders if this is the way Tao saw their world: suspended, meaningless piles of pixels.
He manages to get through the profile shots and submit them before the cut-off time, and by 7:00, even the photo department's head editor is done for the day. Myungsoo sends Hongbin a message to let him know he's leaving. On his way out he passes the news department, and he stops when he sees Jiae is at her desk, discreetly tapping at her phone.
"Still here?" he says, and Jiae starts and almost drops her phone in her scramble to shut it off. When she sees it's just Myungsoo, she makes a face, and he laughs.
"Still here," she replies. "The CEO of GS Group is supposed to make a statement about the alien attack, so we're waiting for that to come in." She slumps forward, hooking her chin over the edge of her desk. "What did that guy from earlier want?"
"Oh, I dropped my camera yesterday when I was out but he fixed it. I'm going to meet him now." Myungsoo checks his phone, but there's no response from Hongbin.
"You met him at the GS Tower? Is he an alien?"
Her words remind Myungsoo of what he'd said in Infinite's lunchtime meeting earlier, and his brain stalls for a moment, before he shakes it off. Just a coincidence. "An alien with KakaoTalk?"
"Why wouldn't an alien use KakaoTalk? No human could be that good-looking. He's an alien for sure." She sighs and smiles at Myungsoo, rotating her head onto its side. "You should go while you still can. Maybe think of me a little, trapped in here while you two handsome guys are eating real food." Myungsoo grins, and makes a mental note to bring a vitamin drink for Jiae tomorrow.
Hongbin still hasn't read his message by the time he's made it to the lobby of his office building. Myungsoo thinks of calling him, then hesitates. It's only been a few minutes, and maybe Hongbin is working late, too. There's a convenience store down the street; he could buy Jiae that vitamin drink now, while he's waiting.
He makes his way to the convenience store, intermittently checking his phone. When he's a few blocks away from the office, he notices there's a cat sitting on the sidewalk in front of him, watching him. It's noticeably large, but not plump, with sleek, blue-grey fur and dark eyes. Myungsoo squats down and strokes its soft head. It doesn't shy away, but nuzzles up into his hand. "So pretty," Myungsoo murmurs.
With his free hand, he opens his phone camera to take a picture, and that's when the cat bats the phone out of his hand, then picks it up in its mouth and takes off. "Hey!" Myungsoo yells. He looks around for help, but realizes he has no choice but to run after it. "Bring that back!"
The cat keeps running until it disappears around a corner between two buildings. When Myungsoo follows it around the corner, his phone is lying on the gravel. He crouches and picks it up, but freezes when he hears a footstep in front of him.
It's not the cat. Instead, at the blind end of the lane is a tall, broad-shouldered man with long black hair and tattoos of feathers drawn all up his arms. He's dressed in a blue suit, with a mask covering the bottom half of his face. Myungsoo recognizes that shade of blue, and his mouth goes dry.
He stands up, and starts to walk backwards out of the lane. "I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't mean to come here."
"Don't walk away," says a melodic voice, and N emerges from the shadows behind the tattooed man, yellow eyes glowing in their black paint. Quickly, Myungsoo opens his phone to Infinite's group chat and stabs in a message as best as he can, until he hears N say, "Put the phone down." No, Myungsoo thinks, but his hands still drop his phone back onto the gravel on their own.
"What do you want from me?" he asks.
N chuckles. "Don't be afraid," he says in his normal voice, as he walks closer to Myungsoo, swinging his short staff from one hand. "We saw you at the GS Tower yesterday. We're just going to ask a few questions."
Myungsoo squirms, but his legs won't move from where he's standing, no matter how hard he tries to tense his muscles. Don't walk away, N had said. Maybe teleporting would work, but that would only make VIXX more suspicious of him, if not give him away entirely. "Questions about what?"
N stops in front of Myungsoo, and his voice goes soft and musical. "Tell me your relationship to the aliens."
Myungsoo's chest grows tight with panic, but he can't stop the words that leave his mouth automatically. "No relationship. We're just trying to figure out what they're looking for."
"Ah. What are they looking for?" When Myungsoo doesn't respond immediately, N hums impatiently, shaking his head. "That's not it," he mutters to himself. More clearly, he repeats, "Tell me what they're looking for."
Myungsoo squeezes his eyes shut. "They're looking for the Black Pearl, but we don't know what the Black Pearl is."
"And who's-" N catches himself this time. "Tell me who you're searching with."
There's sweat trickling down Myungsoo's temple and the back of his neck, and a stinging sensation in his eyes and nose. He sniffles and pinches his face tight. "Infinite."
"That's us," comes Hoya's voice from behind Myungsoo. A red blur flashes by and Woohyun punches N in the jaw, sending him reeling backwards.
N wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "Ah, your friends are here," he says to Myungsoo.
"So this is what VIXX does," Woohyun says. "Bullies defenseless civilians." N picks up his staff to strike Woohyun with it, but Woohyun stops the swing in midair and jabs N in the gut. The tattooed man jumps out at Woohyun, turning into a dark blue-furred panther mid-leap, and Hoya jumps in, too.
Myungsoo stands back, thinking of ways he can help them and coming up blank. He spots his phone on the ground and picks it up. There's a message from Hongbin: Hi Kim Myungsoo! Sorry, but work is keeping me late and I won't be able to make it tonight. Are you free tomorrow? Really sorry again. The message seems to have been sent around 6:00. Myungsoo wonders how he could have missed it.
A rushing breeze blows gravel into Myungsoo's face, and makes the four who are fighting stop in their positions. "N hyung!" yells the masked man in blue who appears at the end of the alley. "It's time to go, come on!"
N grunts, shoving Woohyun away. The panther doesn't follow. "Leo hyung, you too," says the masked man. Growling, the panther gallops to him, shifting briefly to human before turning back into the grey cat Myungsoo had seen earlier. The masked man scoops him up and puts him around his neck with one hand, and holds on to N with the other. Then he bends his knees and jumps up into the sky, blasting the gravel where he had been standing into perfect concentric circles.
Woohyun helps pull Myungsoo to his feet and dusts him off. "What was that all about?" he asks.
"I don't know," Myungsoo replies. "They were asking me about the aliens."
Hoya frowns as he's brushing dust off the arms of his costume. "What did you tell them?"
"About the Black Pearl, and about Infinite." Myungsoo looks between Hoya and Woohyun. "But I guess they'd have figured that out anyway."
"So much for them being on our side."
"Is there any way you can stay home from work tomorrow?" Woohyun asks. "You can stay at the headquarters with Sunggyu. It's obviously not safe for you around here."
"Especially for a defenseless civilian," Myungsoo adds before he can stop himself.
"Hey, I was just trying to keep your cover," Woohyun replies. Then he puts his arm around Myungsoo's back and pulls him in for a side hug. Myungsoo rests his head on top of Woohyun's. "I'm a defenseless civilian too, that's why I wear a red bodysuit. The only reason why I wear a red bodysuit, by the way."
"You shouldn't take anything Red says seriously anyway," says Hoya, and Woohyun attempts to kick him with one leg, but Hoya bends out of his reach.
"I think we should get going," Woohyun says. "And I mean you and me, Boradori can find his own way home." This time it's Hoya who attempts to kick Woohyun, but Woohyun zips from one side of Myungsoo to the other, out of his reach.
"All right," Myungsoo says, and he holds out his hand to Hoya. Hoya takes it, and Myungsoo closes his eyes and teleports them back to headquarters.
* * *
The next evening, Myungsoo meets Lee Hongbin at a kimchi jjigae restaurant near Gwanghwamun. The restaurant is poorly lit inside, and the only seating is two long wooden tables and benches. Hongbin is the only customer there when Myungsoo walks in. He's frowning at something on his phone, but when Myungsoo greets him he looks up and smiles widely.
"Kim Myungsoo," he says. "Sorry again about yesterday. I didn't want it to happen, but my boss is kind of pushy."
"I understand. Seven is usually an early night for me, too."
Hongbin smiles, but he casts his eyes downward. Before Myungsoo can ask what's wrong, he hits his hands on the table and says, "So, shall we order? I'm hungry."
After they decide on what to get in their stew and place their order, they fall silent. Each of them tries to say something once, before breaking off into awkward laughter.
Finally, when the man working that day brings their side dishes, Myungsoo says, "What were you doing that day at the tower? You were taking pictures."
Hongbin laughs. "I didn't know how to ask you that, either."
Myungsoo presses the tips of his chopsticks against his lower lip. "Is it secret?"
"No, it's fine. It's just kind of weird. But... Lately, I'm really interested in outer space. And with all these aliens coming from I don't know where..."
"EXO Planet," says Myungsoo, before he can stop himself. Hongbin tilts his head, and Myungsoo adds quickly, "One of the writers who's been covering this, he said that's where they're from."
"Does he know why the aliens are here?"
Myungsoo shakes his head. "He doesn't know."
"Ah." Hongbin doesn't press, and Myungsoo almost thanks him for it.
"I have a friend who's into aliens," he says. He thinks of Sungyeol flinging fireballs at Tao, and adds, "Or he used to be. But he just buys toy spaceships and stuff."
"Yeah, I know it was dangerous. But I wanted to see an alien up close, just once. I guess I got my wish." Hongbin chuckles awkwardly, and Myungsoo laughs, too. "Thank you again for saving me, really. I don't know how you got over there so fast."
"Well, um," Myungsoo stammers, his face growing hot. "I just... I saw you were in trouble. That's all."
"My hero," Hongbin says, beaming.
Myungsoo ducks his head down so Hongbin won't see that he's probably bright red. "You don't have to call me that."
He's saved when their stew arrives on the table. If nothing else, he can pretend his flush is just from the steam and the spice. "Is your work related to outer space?" he asks, trying to change the subject.
But Hongbin is more tenacious than he expected. "No, I work in a bookstore. I've only been interested in space for about a year," he says, as he blows on a spoonful of rice and cooked kimchi. "After that thing fell into the Han River. Did you hear about that?"
Myungsoo nearly chokes on his rice, and he drinks some water and fans his face with one hand. "Sorry, the food," he croaks. It's a weak excuse, but Hongbin nods along. "Yeah, I remember that."
He'd been taking pictures along the river that day; he wasn't a newspaper photographer yet, just a freelancer working on his portfolio. It was a beautiful day, just the beginning of spring. There had been a few wispy white clouds in the sky, and then one very long, solid one. Myungsoo hadn't even noticed it until it started getting closer and the blue sky started turning lighter, almost white. Then someone screamed to run for cover.
There had been seven people who hadn't run for cover. Six of them had come just to see what was happening. Hoya had been on his way to a dance audition when the sky lit up. Sungyeol and Dongwoo had seen the cloud through the window of their classroom. Sunggyu was on his way to his next job. Myungsoo just happened to be there.
The falling object impacted with the river about a kilometre away from them, and while it raised a big splash, that was all, and soon the sky returned to its normal colour. The most logical scientific explanation was an asteroid, but this conflicted with satellite photography, which showed the object to be smaller and much more dense. Most people in Seoul started referring to the event as the "falling star". There was a tense 2-month investigation into whether North Korea had performed a secret missile launch. Whatever fell into the river was never recovered; it was assumed to have dissolved, or been carried out to the ocean. Two days later, Myungsoo woke up wishing the convenience store wasn't so far away, and accidentally teleported for the first time.
"My friend..." Hongbin says, snapping Myungsoo out of his thoughts. "He has a theory that the aliens have something to do with that, that it's all connected."
"I don't know anything about that," Myungsoo replies, looking down into his bowl.
Another silence passes between them. Then Hongbin clicks his chopsticks together. "So, tell me what it's like working at a newspaper."
Tell me. N's yellow eyes flash in Myungsoo's mind for a moment, and a chill runs through him. But when he looks up it's to Hongbin's bright, handsome face, and he forces himself to relax. There's no reason for him to keep thinking about that part of his life if Hongbin isn't asking him about it. Hongbin isn't dangerous. He's just a stranger who wants to be Myungsoo's friend, just like Infinite were strangers that became his friends, and that's all.
* * *
The next EXO alien arrives two days later. This time the portal opens over the Han River, perilously close to the government buildings on Yeouido and only a few kilometres away from where the falling star landed in the water. Myungsoo's still on probation at work for the broken camera incident, so another photographer gets the assignment instead. It's meant to be a punishment, but in his head Myungsoo thanks his boss for letting him get away.
When he and the rest of Infinite arrive on the scene, they're immediately blasted back by a strong wind coming off the water. Even the police cars parked around the river barrier rock back and forth. "Let me guess what its power is," says Woohyun.
They spot Kai hovering over the river, watching the new alien it's brought to Earth send blasts of air at the civilians and emergency personnel gathered along the bank of the river. When Kai sees them, it immediately blinks out of sight, then reappears in front of them.
"Sehun," it calls, and its fellow alien stops blowing wind at the civilians, and instead propels itself towards Infinite. Hoya tenses up and Sungyeol gets ready to throw a blast at them, but Sunggyu holds out his hand, and steps forward.
"Hello, Kai," he says. When Kai growls in response, he holds up his gloved hands in a position of surrender. "Don't worry, I'm not going to do anything."
The alien named Sehun frowns. "Where's the Black Pearl?" it demands, in a low, drawling voice.
"We don't have what you're looking for," Sunggyu replies steadily. "And we've already told you, you're not going to find it by tearing apart our planet."
"Stop lying to us," Kai says. "We've traced its energy pattern here, to Seoul City. We know it's you." It tilts its head at Sunggyu. "Where are the others?"
Sunggyu does a quick head count to make sure. "This is all of us."
Kai tilts its head the other way and blinks its sleepy eyes. "Tao said there were more of you."
The Infinite members exchange a look. "Those guys weren't with us," Sungyeol pipes up. "They've got their own weird agenda."
"Look," Dongwoo says, just as a blue-suited man swoops down from the sky and hits Sehun feet-first, knocking it to the ground. Kai flickers briefly on the spot to get out of the flying man's way, and when it returns, Leo in panther form jumps on it with a paw at its throat.
The Infinite team immediately jumps into action. Their attacks are half directed at EXO, and half at VIXX. Woohyun and Hoya take on Leo again; Sungjong and his double fight the one with the time control power; Sungyeol tries to take out both Sehun and the one who flies, only to find his arms are paralyzed. In response, Dongwoo goes over to the VIXX member responsible and jumps on him.
Myungsoo stays where he is, not sure of what to do. When he sees N running towards them with the Rovix robot behind him, his blood runs cold.
"White!" he shouts, barely remembering to use Sunggyu's code name. He quickly teleports to get closer to where Sunggyu and Sehun are struggling on the ground. There are singed tufts of grass around them where Sungyeol's fireballs have landed, and soot streaks on Sunggyu's white costume.
Kai teleports over from the fight between Sungjong and the blue-haired VIXX member. "Stop this right now."
N strikes Kai across the head with the blunt end of his short staff, momentarily stunning it. "Tell me-" His voice is cut off by a blast of wind from Sehun that knocks him backwards, and Rovix lumbers forward to strike. Surprisingly, Kai manages to catch the robot's arm, and when it punches back, the robot seems rattled by the impact.
"Enough!" Kai shouts again. "Come with us." Sehun gets to its feet, and Sunggyu rises as well, but he doesn't look right. He's knocked out, Myungsoo realizes, and his movements are bound somehow by the air around Sehun. N is upright too, bound by the same spell.
"Wait," Myungsoo yells. He looks back at the others for help, but they can hardly get away from their battles with the other VIXX members. If only he were fast like Woohyun and Dongwoo, he thinks, or strong like Hoya and Sungjong, or smart like Sungyeol and Sunggyu. Then he could help.
Sehun is taking Sunggyu and N's bodies towards the river now, and Kai has opened a portal above the riverbank. It looks like a hexagonal cut-out in the air, with nothing but black on the other side. VIXX's robot is already heading towards it. Myungsoo doesn't know what else to do, so he runs too. He can't fight the aliens off, but maybe if he grabs Sunggyu in time, he can teleport them both to safety.
Rovix reaches the portal just before Myungsoo, and Myungsoo tries to bat the robot away as he jumps for Sunggyu. He closes his eyes and thinks about the furthest possible place they can get to, just before everything goes dark.
* * *
When Myungsoo wakes up, his mask is gone. That's the first thing he notices. The second thing he notices is that Sunggyu is next to him, with N and the robot on his other side, and the third thing he notices is that all four of them are strapped upright in some seriously uncomfortable chairs.
They're in a room with walls so white they're almost blue. The only things in the room are them, the chairs, and a simple table, decorated with a mirror and a few white flowers that look like orchids. The furniture is white, too. There are two aliens sitting behind the table, one on the side with the mirror and one on the side with the flowers. They're dressed in ornate white outfits - a contrast to the simple, dark clothes worn by the other aliens - and watching them with calm expressions.
A short alien with big, round eyes pulls off Sunggyu's mask. Sunggyu sighs when he sees Myungsoo beside him. "They got you too," he mumbles as he slouches into his bonds. "I'm sorry."
He has a defeated look on his face, and even if Myungsoo can't read minds like Sunggyu does, he can hear his voice: I should have protected you. "No," he says, with a force that surprises even himself, and Sunggyu looks up again. "I came because I wanted to protect you."
Sunggyu opens his mouth to reply. Then he closes it, and he gives Myungsoo the best smile he can manage. It's small, but it's real. "Thank you."
Next to him, N writhes as the wide-eyed alien tries to remove his mask, only to find he isn't wearing one. The alien glances at the big table, and the alien with the mirror raises a hand and blasts a jet of water at N's face that's strong enough to blast away the paint from around his eyes and leave his skin a little red. His eyes, Myungsoo notices, are still yellow.
Then the wide-eyed alien goes to Rovix. At first it just knocks on the robot's head, but Rovix is unresponsive. The alien glances back at the table, and says something Myungsoo doesn't understand. Then it clamps its hands on either side of Rovix's head, and yanks it off.
Inside the robot's head is Lee Hongbin.
Myungsoo gasps when he sees it, and Sunggyu looks at him with concern. Hongbin's eyes are white-blue, like the walls of the room they're in, but when he sees Myungsoo's similarly exposed face, he startles and his eyes turn dark again. His gaze falls towards the floor in front of Myungsoo, as if Myungsoo won't see him if he doesn't make eye contact. Myungsoo just keeps staring, unable to process the sight of Rovix's body with Hongbin's head sticking out of it.
The wide-eyed alien bows to the table and leaves the room. The two aliens behind the table briefly confer, before the one with the mirror stands and clears its throat. It's smiling, which is unexpected. Myungsoo doesn't think he's seen any of the EXO aliens smile. "I am Suho, and this is Lay," it says, gesturing to the alien with the flowers. "We're here to represent our planet's government, because we think there's been a bit of a misunderstanding."
N scoffs. "The part where you destroy our city looking for something that isn't there, or the part where you kidnap us?"
"Hey," says Lay, glaring at N. Suho puts its hand on Lay's shoulder, and Lay settles back in its seat.
"We're very sorry about that. It was our government's directive. It was the only way we were able to get in contact with you reliably."
"Destroying a building?" Sunggyu says, with an eyebrow raised.
"It would've been less trouble had the Black Pearl been was where we thought it was," Suho admits.
"They say they don't know what the Black Pearl is," Lay says to Suho.
"We don't," N says, but he closes his mouth when Lay glares at him again.
"Oh, right," says Suho. "The Black Pearl is an artifact that's sacred to our planet, and important to the way our government works. But recently, two members of our government decided to leave very suddenly."
"They took the Black Pearl," Lay says, cutting Suho off, "but they lost it somewhere as they were getting away. We were able to narrow down its energy pattern as much as Seoul City, but that was it. Until you showed up."
He's looking right at Sunggyu, and Myungsoo does too. "We showed up?" Sunggyu repeats.
"You created a telepathic link with Kai, and Kai recognized the energy signature. And then Tao met you"-it looks at N now-"and your energy was even stronger. Why do you think so many of your abilities are similar to ours? You got them from the Black Pearl. Maybe you don't know it, but you did."
Sunggyu's eyes are cast down in thought. Then he looks up, and his expression is calm. "Yes, I remember. It fell in the river."
N is quieter too, but he seems disturbed. "And what does this thing look like?" he asks the aliens.
Suho wipes a layer of water over its mirror, then holds its hand up in front of it. In the mirror, Suho's hand is holding a small, polygonal object, covered with geometrically arranged grooves. "The Starlight," Hongbin says, and N gives him a look Myungsoo can't see.
He clears his throat, and turns his face back to the two aliens. "We know where it is."
"So you can return it to us," Lay says. "Finally." It nods to Suho. "Let's go to Seoul City."
"Wait," says Sunggyu. "They return it, and what happens? You won't contact Earth again, right?"
Suho nods. "Yes. We no longer contact Earth, and we remove all traces of the Black Pearl's energy from your planet. I know this sounds like more destruction, but it's a simple, non-invasive process-"
"So we'll lose our powers," N says, and Myungsoo's eyes widen.
Suho blinks at him. "Yes."
N exchanges a look with Hongbin, then he leans as far forward as he can to look at Sunggyu. "How does Infinite feel about this?"
Sunggyu seems upset, but when he turns to look N in the eye, Myungsoo sees it's determination. "If this is what it takes to save the world, they'll just have to accept it."
His words make N's expression soften. He looks at Hongbin one more time before he nods to the aliens. "Okay. Let's save the world."
* * *
When they reappear through Kai's portal on the bank of the Han River, they're greeted by the army, who have their guns trained on the small group of aliens that accompany the four of them. "Don't shoot," N says as loud as he can, and Sehun uses the surrounding air to amplify the power of N's voice.
VIXX take care of the handover, accompanied by the group from EXO Planet and some military personnel for supervision. Meanwhile, Sunggyu and Myungsoo do their best to explain the situation to the rest of Infinite.
"I wish we'd had some warning," says Hoya.
"So do I," Sunggyu replies. "But it was the easiest way to stop this from happening."
"So what do we do now?" Sungjong asks.
Sunggyu shakes his head. "I don't know. We just go back to the way our lives were before."
"I still want all of you in my life," Dongwoo says, very seriously.
Myungsoo feels tears coming on, so he wanders away from the group. He gets as far as the river bank before he hears Sunggyu calling his name.
"Myungsoo," he says, and he runs up and stops in front of Myungsoo. "Thank you for coming with me, to meet the aliens. I'm glad you were there."
Myungsoo shrugs, and sniffles. Now he's really going to cry. "I couldn't do anything for you," he says. "I couldn't do anything for any of you."
Sunggyu pulls him into a hug. "You're one of us. Just being there is enough." He sighs. "And anyway, it doesn't really matter now."
They stay like that for a bit, with Myungsoo crying into Sunggyu's stained costume, until Myungsoo feels Sunggyu tense and shift away a bit, keeping one arm around Myungsoo's shoulders. Myungsoo turns his head to see Hongbin standing there, half in Rovix's body. He turns away.
"Go away," he says.
"Kim Myungsoo," says Hongbin. "I mean, Infinite Black. I mean..."
"I don't want to talk to you," Myungsoo says. "You lied to me."
"Look." Hongbin's voice sounds a little ragged too. "I'm sorry about... About everything. I didn't know the others were planning to corner you like that, and I didn't know you were Infinite, either. I was just supposed to get more information, but I really did want to see you again. I swear."
"You lied to me," Myungsoo says again. "And you hurt my friends. That's all I need to know."
"Myungsoo..."
Myungsoo closes his eyes and thinks, I just want to be with my friends. That's how this whole thing started: him closing his eyes, and thinking about being somewhere else. But when he opens his eyes, he's standing in the exact same place. The only difference is that Hongbin is gone.
* * *
Two weeks after they lose their powers, Infinite meet again at their headquarters in Mangwon-dong. Woohyun calls it their support group, and it's only half of a joke. Normal life is harder than Myungsoo had expected: he hadn't realized how much he used his powers until he no longer had them. There's a sort of sadness that hangs over all of them, and while getting together doesn't fix it, it at least lets them share it together.
"We've been superhero-ing again," Sungjong confesses at this meeting.
"Who's 'we'?" asks Sunggyu, and Sungjong nods at Hoya and Dongwoo on either side of him.
"What do you do without your powers, cute them to death?" says Sungyeol.
"Challenge them to a dance battle?" Woohyun offers.
"It's just small," Dongwoo says. "There was this old man that was going around bothering women in the neighbourhood. Some bully beating smaller kids up after school. Stuff like that."
"They think we're just regular people in costumes since Infinite is retired," Hoya says.
Woohyun snorts. "You are regular people in costumes," he says, and Hoya tries to kick him from across the floor.
Myungsoo checks his watch. He's only allowed so much time for his lunch break, and he's still not quite used to calculating travel times to and from places. "Can we go eat? I have to get back to work soon," he says. "Unlike the rest of you regular people in costumes."
That gets a laugh from Dongwoo, and Woohyun leaps up and puts his arms around Myungsoo. Myungsoo smiles, even as he tries to pry Woohyun's arm from around his neck.
They walk into their usual local restaurant, and on his way in, Myungsoo stops dead in his tracks. At one of the tables is Hongbin, and he's sitting between N, whose eyes are dark again, and a man whose narrow eyes look like Leo's.
Sunggyu bumps into him from behind. "Hey, what's up? Aren't you the one in a hurry?" he says. Myungsoo points, and Hongbin looks up from his food to see him and Sunggyu, and his eyes widen. "Come on," Sunggyu says, nudging Myungsoo. Then, more gently, he adds, "Whatever happened before, it's over now."
Myungsoo walks into the restaurant, but instead of joining the others, he walks up to VIXX's table. "Lee Hongbin," he says. His voice is shaking. "Don't ever lie to me again, okay?"
The others glance at Hongbin, but Hongbin just nods at Myungsoo. "I won't. And I will do whatever I can to make it up to you."
"Okay." Myungsoo turns to go, then stops, and turns around again. "I want to go to that kimchi jjigae restaurant again."
Hongbin's face lights up, and it feels like it's been forever since Myungsoo's last seen that smile. "Deal," he says.
"Oooh," coo two of the others sitting at his table, and N raises an eyebrow at Hongbin and elbows him. Sungyeol applauds when Myungsoo sits down with Infinite again, and Myungsoo blushes, but he's still smiling. Maybe normal life won't be so bad after all.