[EXO] [PD8] Driving Force 3/3
Title: Driving Force 3/3
Fandom: EXO (sort of fused with Final Fantasy VII)
Series: Phoenix Down (#8)
Rating: PG-13
Genre: AU, crossover (sort of)
Word count: 22,666
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit.
Part 2
Driving Force 3/3
A hasty comparison over breakfast reveals that for once, they've all had more-or-less identical dreams save their differing viewpoints. Jongdae's still getting used to it.
"I used to be around materia all the time in my old job," he says, waving his fork for emphasis. "All the time. The Summons sold quickly, and we didn't get them in much to start with, but I still saw them. And I had no clue."
"Neither did they," Kris says. "Or you'd have known about this years ago."
"Yeah, but last night I sat and talked with people I used to sell. Do you have any idea how awkward that is?"
Yixing, sitting on the bench next to Jongdae, gives him a reassuring pat on the thigh. "I don't think they're going to hold that against you."
Jongin agrees. "We've all had to change the way we think about Summons."
"You more than most," Kris says, and Jongin blushes. "Did you work things out last night?"
"When I woke up in the middle of the night they were snuggled together in the other bed," Jongdae says, snickering. "I think they worked it out, yeah..."
If looks could kill, Jongdae would be a corpse sitting across from Jongin, who declines to offer any further information on the current situation with Lu Han. It's none of Kris's business anyway, except that things will go much smoother if everyone's talking to each other and there are no resentful undercurrents that could hamper communication at critical moments.
"Good," he says. "Then we can go."
After breakfast they load their gear and chocobos back into the van. Elder Hargo waves a goodbye from up on the plateau; Kris waves back before sliding into the front passenger seat. Jongdae's insisting on taking first stint behind the wheel again. It's not that long a drive, he assures them, and he's correct: a little further through the mountains, over some grassy plains, across another river and back to the grass - less than two hours of travel. They have few interruptions en route. Mostly, the Nibel Wolves glare at them from a safe distance and stay out of their way. Toasted corpses of a couple of their kin indicate the reason for their unusual reticence.
The tracks lead straight into town. When they park, leaving the chocobos in the van, there's no sign of the buggy, but there's not much else either. The shops and houses seem in decent enough repair, and there's a dog running around the water tower in the centre of town, but the people are only scattered, skittish movements in the corners of their eyes, darting through doors and slipping down sidestreets without even looking their way. It's quite a shock after the lively warmth of Cosmo Canyon.
"Don't waste your time trying to talk to anyone," Jongdae advises. "They're not keen on strangers around here."
After trying to make eye contact with three different people and having them deliberately ignore him, Kris gives up. "So I'd noticed. You know where the library is?"
"I've never been in, but yeah. It's in the old mansion up those steps there. It's..." Jongdae grimaces. "It's a pretty weird building. I hear it used to be full of mad scientists conducting experiments, or something, until they ran out of funds and it became a public library instead."
Jongin shudders, looking over his shoulder with apprehension at the gigantic building up ahead. It's surrounded by high stone walls, though not nearly as high as those of the mansion itself, which are dotted with windows - a series of dark, even eyes watching over them. "Are you sure it's safe to go in? It looks kind of..."
"Haunted?" Yixing suggests. "You probably don't have to worry, Jongin. I don't think ghosts come out in the morning."
"Nah, they're late risers," Jongdae says. "No self-respecting spectre would start haunting before mid-afternoon, easy."
"As Jongin should know, since he already sleeps like the dead." Kris's joke does nothing to make Jongin any less wary, but the reality is that if any ghosts do actually try to threaten him in the library, Lu Han, in all likelihood, will find a way to exorcise them before they get anywhere near him, whether scimitars can cut ghosts or not.
The spiked metal gates, while slightly ajar, are hardly welcoming. "If they don't like to talk to strangers here, will the librarians even let us in?" Kris asks as they mount the steps.
Jongdae casts a look up at the solid oak door, which is about twice his height and five times as intimidating, what with all the carvings of huge-fanged monsters snarling directly at them. "If they don't, I'm pretty sure we can take on a couple of librarians. I mean, Yixing beat up a Land Worm with an umbrella."
But there are no librarians in sight when they enter the building - and at first glance, no library either. It looks like no maintenance has been performed on the interior for years: the peeling wallpaper is more grey than blue-green, and stained where trickles of rain have crept through cracks and down the walls, en route to matted carpets too dingy to reveal their original colour. The enormous oval windows, though murky, remain intact, but the wooden frames are filthy with mould and, like the bannisters, liberally coated with dust.
"If this is the state of the building, then what are the books going to be like?" Jongin wrinkles his nose at the decay. "Are you sure there's a library here?"
Jongdae points to a sign hanging next to a doorway on the left. It says: Children's Reading Room. "I'm not saying it's a place I'd ever want to hang out, but it's still a library."
"We're not going to find any maps in there," Kris says. "And probably no people either. Let's split up and search. You and Jongin take the downstairs rooms, and Yixing and I will head upstairs. The maps are probably in a section by themselves somewhere."
The first floor is no less creepy than the ground floor, mostly home to remnants of the original furnishings and boxes stacked to the ceiling. One room is so thick with overgrown plants, Kris doesn't even bother trying to force his way inside. He figures the actual library part of the building must be on the ground floor alone, with the upper floor used purely for storage, because none of the rooms they've checked so far have contained so much as a single sheet of paper.
He turns to suggest to Yixing that they help with the search downstairs instead, but a small, decagonal mirror flies between them, aiming straight for Kris's face. He draws back, staring at his own visage as it passes by. The mirror spins, turns, and tries again.
"I don't think we've got time for you to be admiring yourself in the mirror," Yixing says, heading for the door.
Kris groans at him, dodging another attack. "In case you hadn't noticed, it's trying to slice my face off!"
"It is?" Yixing turns, staring quizzically at the silvery shape before launching himself forward, staff in hand. He strikes the mirror dead-centre. Sharp, shining shards explode outwards from the impact, littering the floor with slivers.
"It was," Kris corrects himself.
They encounter another half-dozen of the pesky little things, mostly swatted by Yixing before Kris can even draw his sword; from the crackling sounds and scent of ozone drifting up the stairs, they're not the only ones running into trouble. Jongdae must be using his Bolt materia.
Kris shares a glance with Yixing, who holds out a hand as if to say 'it's your call'. To go down and help, or trust that Jongin and Jongdae can take care of themselves just fine without reinforcements. "We keep searching," he decides.
But the decision's not his to make, as it turns out. As they're about to open the door to the next room, Jongin comes running up the stairs towards them, Jongdae hot on his heels.
"We heard breaking glass," Jongin explains, slightly breathless. "Lots of it. Are you all right?"
"Not even a scratch," Kris assures him. "Thanks to Yixing. Was there trouble downstairs?"
Jongdae nods. "Some weird floating pumpkin things...oh, and this male model type hanging out on a pendulum. He made the mistake of looking too long in Jongin's direction. It didn't end well."
"I don't know how Lu Han could tell," Jongin says mournfully. "He could've been harmless."
"He tried to slice me open with his pendulum while leering at you," Jongdae says. "'Harmless' isn't really the word I'd use to describe him."
Jongin concedes that Pendulum Guy probably didn't have the best of intentions. He fills them in on the search, which has so far revealed plenty of bookcases, but all of them empty. "The shelves are dusty too," he says. "They haven't held books for a while."
"It's like someone cleaned the place out," Jongdae says. "All the furniture's here, but there aren't any books. There's a pretty nice piano, though..."
"We haven't had any better luck up here," Kris says. "Only a few more left to try."
He pushes open the next door, which looks like it might once have been someone's sewing room. There's a dusty plastic sewing machine in one corner, with baskets of moth-eaten fabrics lining the walls. There's a bookcase here too, but while this one's not actually empty, all it contains are patterns for black hooded robes, with the same set of four numbers and directions scribbled all over them. They're not terribly exciting.
Slightly more exciting is the giant grey safe next to the bookcase, which is even taller than Kris.
"You don't suppose they'd be keeping maps in there, do you?" Yixing says. "The professor would probably still be here, trying to open it."
Jongin approaches the safe to take a closer look, then shakes his head. "If you want it open, don't look at me. I don't do combination locks."
"You do other locks?" Kris asks, surprised.
"I guess I never told you how I acquired Lu Han's orb, did I?"
Now's not the right time to ask, but Kris makes a mental note to enquire at a later date. Jongin looks embarrassed, but also sort of proud, and if he can pick locks, that's the kind of information that could come in handy one day - much like Yixing's mastery of that deadliest of weapons, the umbrella.
"We're definitely not going to find anything if we spend the rest of the day trying to figure out the combination," Jongdae says. "You've seen what they're keeping in this place - who's to say there's anything of value in there?"
Kris gives the handle an experimental tug, grimacing at the way the cold metal bites his fingers. The door doesn't budge. "If not, why keep it locked?"
He contemplates trying to force the safe. From the state of the mansion, it's evident that the building is no longer in use as a library, or indeed as anything friendly to humans, so it's unlikely anyone will be coming after them with a repair bill. While he tries to gauge whether or not his sword will do the trick, Yixing wanders up with a sheaf of papers in his hand. The black robe patterns from the bookcase. He points to the numbers and directions written in faded blue ink next to the pictures.
"Seriously?" Jongdae says, shaking his head in disbelief. "Who writes down their safe combination and just leaves it lying around for anyone to find?"
"People with bad memories?" Yixing suggests, speaking with the voice of experience. "Should we try it?"
"Might as well," Kris says, so Yixing leaves his staff against the wall and positions himself next to the safe, turning the dial with one hand as he holds the papers in the other. No one makes a sound, not even the irrepressible Jongdae.
Three things happen when the safe unlocks. Yixing half-turns to give Kris a thumbs up and a smile, a bright red materia orb tumbles out from the slowly-widening gap between door and safe...
...and the entire door explodes outwards, sending Yixing flying into the opposite wall. An ominous crack resounds throughout the room, and Kris knows that can't be good. Panicked, he turns to help his friend, but a startled yell from Jongin has his attention divided.
The Summon materia wasn't the only thing in the safe.
Kris momentarily forgets about Yixing. To be fair, no one could expect him to do otherwise, not when a gigantic red and purple monster has somehow just emerged from a safe less than a quarter of its size, and is glaring at them with burning yellow eyes. Even the smallest of the sharp teeth sticking out of its mouth is longer than Kris's forearm. Two arms, one a green claw, the other a yellow stinger, wave menacingly at them, enormous hands ready to pounce. It's between them and the Summon materia, and Kris doesn't know who it is, but he knows he can't leave them behind.
He can't leave Yixing either. Trusting the others to handle the monster, he rushes over to assess the damage. It's not looking good. Yixing's blood has left red, gory streaks on its way down the wall, ending with his crumpled form on the floor, skin split and leaking where the impact has shattered his skull. Kris catches sight of white shards peeking through the pulp that used to be the left side of his head, all blood and bone and battered flesh. Despair settles heavy in his heart. No Potion could cope with injuries on this scale. Yixing's still breathing - Kris can tell by the bubbles of blood on his lips - but for how much longer?
Who heals the healer?
Yixing's staff is still propped against the wall by the ruined safe. If Kris can just get to that Restore materia...
He rises quickly, ready to do whatever it takes to make it past the monster. They don't have much time. As he steps forward, Jongin stumbles into him while trying to dodge the flailing arms. Whatever they're up against has a powerful smack.
"I can't get near it," Jongin pants. There's a sizzling sound from across the room as lightning crackles from Jongdae's lance, eliciting a pained howl from the monster. "How's Yixing?"
"Bad," Kris says grimly. "We need his Restore materia, now."
He doesn't say 'dying'. He doesn't have to. The blood trails on the wall are plain as day, even in the gloom.
Jongin's face begins to crumple; he bites his lip resolutely and turns away from Kris, pounding his clenched fists together hard enough for the mythril in his gauntlets to clang. He storms forward, ducking the swipe of a ferocious green claw to weave his way closer to the monster's body, and lands a solid blow on its purple half.
Kris knows how strong Jongin is, and how much damage he can dish out, but the monster doesn't even seem to notice it's been hit. It continues to flail as Jongin pummels its purple leg. Kris can't make it close enough to help, settling for trying to take out the green arm as it snaps past him. He slices once, twice, to no effect. Jongdae can't use his Bolt materia with Jongin in range; the lightning spells stop, but his lance, at least, appears to be of some use when he stabs the monster viciously in its yellow arm. It screams, lashing out wildly with the green arm and slamming Jongin face-first to the floor.
There's no time. Physical attacks seem to be sort of hit and miss, they only have one Magic materia between them and the only magical items they have are in Yixing's bag - which is somewhere beneath him, and Kris isn't going to try to find it. He has to call Baekhyun - but what if even Baekhyun isn't enough? What if Baekhyun stands there judging the monster and it catches him with its claw, shredding the disdainful sneer right off his face as it tears him to pieces? Baekhyun's a Summon, and this is what he does...but Baekhyun's also a person, and what right does Kris have to expose him to danger?
"A little help over here?" Jongdae yells, and that's when Kris realises he's frozen in place, sword still before him.
"Coming!" he calls back. He has to at least get Jongin out of the way so Jongdae can use his lightning spells, or they're never getting through.
Keeping low to the ground, sword arm raised overhead, he reaches for Jongin's prone body. There's a puddle of blood forming beneath him, leaking from what looks to be a broken nose. That's not all that's broken, Kris notices when he locks an arm over Jongin's waist. One arm is bent back at an angle that can't possibly be healthy. The left arm, where Lu Han's materia orb resides in a leather and mythril gauntlet. Lu Han, who should be here dicing the monster into bite-size chunks, but who can't come out because it's too soon after showing up to terrorise some pendulum-swinging model who'd dared to leer at Jongin. He must be kicking himself now, if he has any idea what's going on, and with Jongin unconscious Kris has no clue how much that might be.
Moving Jongin probably won't do his injuries any good but it's better than the alternative, and really, Kris has no choice but to begin dragging him across the floor, out of Jongdae's firing line. He can do this. He'll move Jongin to the door, then he'll get up and help Jongdae, he'll get the staff, he'll-
He'll watch helplessly as the yellow arm spears Jongdae through the stomach.
Jongdae slides backwards off the yellow stinger, slicking it with his blood as he falls to the ground. His lance clatters to the floor beside him. That's three down.
Leaving Jongin where he is, Kris runs over to Jongdae and immediately wishes he'd skipped breakfast. There's nothing like seeing a friend's intestines poking through his skin to turn the stomach. Though white-faced and shaking, Jongdae's clinging to consciousness, hands pressed over his torn, bloodstained shirt, trying - and failing - to keep himself from spilling all over the floor. He opens and closes his mouth a couple of times but nothing comes out; Kris leans in, thinking perhaps Jongdae is trying to impart a dying message.
"The...re...red...s-side," Jongdae slurs, managing a faint smile at Kris. "Hit...red..."
His eyes roll back in his head before he can finish his sentence. Kris doesn't even have time to check if he's still breathing or not before the yellow arm, still dripping blood, darts towards him. He brings his sword up to block. The stinger crashes against the metal. It's softer than Kris would've expected - moreover, more vulnerable too. The angle's too poor to do any real damage but the monster screams, withdrawing the arm. When Kris checks, there's blood on his sword, and it's too green to belong to Jongdae.
That's the first wound he's managed to inflict on it. Jongdae's lance had successfully speared it too. Attacking the green arm, on the other hand, had accomplished nothing...but the green arm's on the purple side, and Jongin's attacks on that side had been futile. The yellow arm's on the red side, and if Jongdae's telling him to hit the monster there...
While the monster cradles its wounded arm, Kris takes advantage of the momentary lull in the fight to advance, hoping to reach the red half of its body and preferably stab something vital. It can be injured: he's seen that now. It's all up to him.
He nearly makes it. Unfortunately, only one of the arms is injured. The other comes around to catch him from behind, raking its giant green claw down his back and tearing his sheath straight off his shoulder. Pain screams down his nerves, sending him to his knees, so overwhelmed he loses his grip on his sword. It's worse than being shot. He can feel the scrape of each individual talon, his back host to a variety of levels of pain, each of a different intensity and none weaker than agony. Blood soaks into his shirt, dripping towards his waistband. He can't move. He wants to, oh how he wants to, but his legs refuse to push up from the floor. Stay down, his body's telling him. Give up. Lie down. What else can you do?
But everyone's counting on him. He's the leader. He's responsible for them. He has to...he has to...
An unexpected warm glow from the door interrupts Kris's moment of anguish. Feebly, he turns his head towards the source of the light. It's...Yixing.
In a manner of speaking. Yixing's no longer lying in a broken heap on the floor. He's fully upright, shimmering with a pale turquoise light and smiling serenely at his own arms. Such serenity is, perhaps, surprising, given that they are not precisely arms any longer. Human arms, as a rule, do not terminate with hooves.
Kris forgets his pain as he watches the incredible transformation, too fascinated to pay any heed to his own body. Yixing leans forwards to drop his arms to the ground, hooves clattering on the floor. His legs have changed also, and as he arches his back his remaining bloodstained clothes vanish, giving way to the body of a pale white horse.
No, not a horse. As Yixing's face elongates, stretching out in front, and his ears sharpen, rounding to points, something else grows too. A horn, spiralling tall and white from the centre of his new, equine forehead. Yixing has become a unicorn.
The unicorn whinnies once and touches his horn to the ground. The turquoise light surrounding him intensifies, becoming brighter and spreading further until it fills the entire room. Kris feels so warm. The light bathes his wounds, soothing the gashes in his back. Blood no longer trickles down his skin. He breathes deeply, thinking that this must be it, the end has come, and he's now in a place beyond pain, beyond worldly cares, and all that's left for him to do is pass on in peace, all his troubles a thing of the past. He bids a mental farewell to his companions, wishing them the same tranquility and comfort being granted him. He can close his eyes, and sink down, and...
A poke in the shoulder from a unicorn's horn is not conducive to a restful sleep. Kris reluctantly opens his eyes to find that Yixing's not the only one to retreat from death's door. Jongin's on his feet again, both nose and arm back in alignment, and his blood has vanished from the floor. Similarly, Jongdae's torn shirt, now free of bloodstains, reveals only a bare, flat stomach, not a gaping abdominal wound, and his lance is back in his hand.
The comfortable warmth fades, and with it, some of the haze lifts from Kris's mind. Perhaps it's a trifle early to relinquish his hold on life, after all. The unicorn butts him in the shoulder - with his nose, this time, not his horn - and Kris takes the hint, rising to his feet. There's not even a twinge left to remind him of his injury.
He turns to pet Yixing on the nose. The timing's somewhat unfortunate; Yixing changes back just as Kris's hand reaches him, meaning his nose is now much shorter and no longer where it once was. All traces of the turquoise light fade with the last of the transformation.
"It was nice to be able to heal without materia," Yixing says, not sounding too disturbed by his unexpected change, "but I think I'd rather not go through that again."
Kris heaves a relieved sigh, grasping him warmly by the shoulder. "That makes two of us."
Yixing smiles at him, and Kris thinks there are some things he's just never going to understand about their past, whether he remembers it or not. Yixing's just saved them all with some sort of miraculous power - by turning into a unicorn. Kris hopes no one else transforms into anything. He's still processing his own metamorphosis into a dragon.
"I hate to interrupt your warm and fuzzy moment," Jongdae says, "but that thing's not going to be licking its wounds forever. Didn't you hear me tell you to attack the red side?"
Oh yeah. Back before the pain. "I heard," Kris says. "I just didn't get a chance to do anything about it."
"The red side?" Jongin rubs a hand over his now-healed nose. There's no evidence it was ever broken. "Allow me."
He teleports in close to the monster, keeping just distant enough to strike the red half with a roundhouse kick. This time, his attack produces the desired result, and Jongin follows it up with further assaults.
"I noticed that was the only side that seemed to take damage," Jongdae explains as he and Kris dash forward to help Jongin with their respective weapons. It's difficult to hear him over the pained howls.
Holding his sword with both hands, Kris plunges it deep into the monster's side. It's squishier than he really wants to think about, and he's pretty sure he's doing some damage there. "Good job spotting that," he says to Jongdae, who grins as he takes his own turn spearing the creature.
They're forcing it back towards the ruined safe, little by little. It's still attacking, but that's okay - after being healed, Kris feels like he could keep this up forever, like he hasn't been travelling for days and was never at risk of being clawed to death. From the looks of the others, they feel the same way. No longer pale, Jongdae's cheeks are suffused with colour from his exertions; Jongin's once-broken arm never stills as he pounds the monster's hide.
The yellow arm flies over their heads; the monster stops fighting and covers its eyes. Maybe this is it. Maybe they've won. No one moves, waiting to see if the creature will fall. It begins to shake, vibrating from its shaggy head down to its multicoloured, mismatched feet. Kris picks up the tremors through the floorboards, planting his feet wider to keep his knees from knocking together.
Yixing takes advantage of the momentary pause to retrieve his staff from the wall, then darts back to observe from a safer distance. Kris considers doing the same when the shaking abruptly stops and the monster flings its arm away from its eyes. It's no longer yellow. Nor is it pointed.
Kris throws himself sideways to avoid being lashed with a second green claw. The monster is asymmetrical no more, the red and yellow side now a mirror image of the purple and green. Maybe that makes it half-dead? So he hopes, anyway.
It doesn't fight like it's half-dead, though. Jongin has to teleport to escape being sucked down into the floorboards, as the creature throws a burst of Earth magic in his direction. Mini earthquakes pepper the room, keeping them from getting close enough to use their weapons. One false step and they'll fall through to the ground floor. When Kris catches Yixing's side with his elbow he realises they're being herded towards the centre of the room. Jongin keeps moving but even he's running out of places to stand.
"I've got this!" Jongdae yells, holding up his lance with the Bolt materia pointing towards the monster. He unleashes a blast of lightning, catching the monster full in the face.
Kris's heart leaps when the earthquakes stop. "Again!"
Jongdae fires a second time, then a third. Sparks crackle through the air, flashing bright in the gloom. The monster glows red, shuddering again, hissing as the spells sear its flesh. The entire floor rumbles with Earth magic. Kris sways, crouching down to keep his balance.
The fourth blast is enough to end it, vaporising the creature where it stands. It vanishes in a burst of red light.At last.
"I thought it was never going to die," Jongdae says shakily, loosening his deathgrip on his lance.
"Let's get out of here before it changes its mind and comes back for seconds," Kris says. He spots a red glint in the corner, where the Summon materia had rolled away during the earthquakes, and crosses the now-stationary floor to pick it up. He holds it out to Jongdae, hoping it's not another Baekhyun. "You've definitely earned this."
The others nod in emphatic agreement. Jongdae takes the materia with a weary grin, holding it up to read the name before popping the Baekhyun orb loose from its setting and handing it to Yixing, who has an empty space in his staff. He slots the new Summon into his lance. "Looks like we've just found Zitao."
Only three left to go. They're one step closer to reuniting as twelve - but also to a cataclysmic event, and it's with equal parts excitement and apprehension that Kris greets the news that they've picked up their fifth Summon. "Don't call him out yet," he advises Jongdae. "We might need him before we leave here. We still haven't found any maps."
One glance at the wreckage of the safe is enough to tell there's nothing of interest there. That leaves a couple of rooms on the far right of the passage: a decaying sitting room, and an equally decrepit bedroom with more bedbugs than Kris cares to think about. There's a bookcase in the bedroom but it's entirely filled with shoeboxes. Gingerly peeking into a few of them confirms that there are no maps here, either, and this is the last room.
"What now?" Jongin asks, looking to Kris for answers. "Maybe the professor came here and didn't find anything?"
"I don't know." Kris shakes his head, at a loss for what to do. "If he left here without knowing where to go, he could be anywhere by now."
"Not anywhere," Jongdae says. "He's running out of places to go on this continent, unless he retraces his steps, and I think we'd have noticed."
"Costa del Sol is out." Yixing counts them off on his fingers, leaning back against the curved wall next to the bookcase. "I don't think they'd have gone back to the Corel Desert since there aren't any trees-"
He breaks off with a cry, clutching at his staff for balance as the wall slides away behind him, revealing a spiral staircase leading down into the dark. It's not the most obvious place for a door. Kris wonders if it's been opened recently.
"Guess we haven't checked everywhere after all," Jongdae says, clapping Kris on the shoulder. "After you."
It's a long way down. They wedge the sliding door open with a chair, just in case. Jongin carries a lantern they spotted in the sitting room, allowing them just enough light to see the occasional bat. The staircase is too cramped for them to give battle; Jongdae tries to poke the bats with his lance but it's as effective as swatting mosquitoes in the swamp, and the pesky winged creatures continue to swoop around their heads.
At least the bats are a distraction from Jongin's mutterings, which seem to be an exasperating conversation with Lu Han. Far as Kris can tell, Lu Han still can't materialise or he'd be beside them, so he's fretting telepathically over Jongin's recent near-death experience. Which would be fine, except that the rest of them are stuck hearing Jongin's side of it and there are some things about their relationship that Kris has no desire whatsoever to know.
After enough spirals to make them dizzy, the stairs straighten out, the final flight leading straight down into a long tunnel. Kris tries not to look too closely at the floor. Those can't really be bones lying against the wall, can they? He doesn't want to check. In any case, they're not maps.
Two doors await them at the end of the tunnel. The leftmost is locked, but the one on the right opens easily; Jongin lets out a little cheer when he locates a light switch on the wall. The overhead light isn't that bright, but it doesn't have to be - it shows them exactly what they want to see, which is a room full of well-stuffed bookcases.
"Maybe all the books from upstairs are down here now," Yixing says, running a finger along the edge of the nearest shelf. "These cases weren't built to hold so many."
Even the shortest bookcase towers over Kris, and all of them have shelves bowed from the weight. There's only one ladder in sight - this could take a while. Fortunately, there are a few chairs clustered around the table in the centre, too, and they look sturdy enough to climb on.
"Let's split up," Kris says. "Everyone take a case and look for..." He trails off, because really, he has no idea what he's expecting to find. "Anything that might be useful."
"You're such a dependable leader." From anyone else that would definitely be sarcasm, but Yixing looks so sincere while speaking that Kris half-believes it.
The library's in marginally better shape than the rest of the mansion. No monsters creep out of the shadows to attack them (although a few spiders do scuttle across the bookshelves, disturbed by the sudden influx of visitors), the carpets are a little brighter and the wood looks like it might survive the rest of the year. Kris diligently searches the bookcase nearest him, stretching as far as he can until even he is forced to climb on a chair. All the books on this one appear to be about urban development, with titles such as An Illustrated Guide to City Planning and Problems With Plate Construction in Midgar; he thinks it's unlikely that a Tree of Life would feature in such works but continues to search for anything that seems even remotely relevant.
He's just climbing down after finishing the top shelf when an eager, clearly very self-satisfied Jongin calls them all over to the table. It's covered in books, most of them containing more pictures than words.
"Taking a break to read comics?" Jongdae asks.
"Not this time." Jongin pushes the comics aside, dragging a far weightier tome to the centre. "I thought that if they were looking at maps, they might spread them out on the table. And there's no dust here, either."
The volume which has caught Jongin's attention has a pretty black butterfly on the cover, one with turquoise and orange eyes on its wings that clash horribly with the pink flower in the background. It's certainly no book of maps.
"I asked Lu Han," Jongin says. "This is the same lepidopterology book he ordered for his shop."
Probably not the exact same copy, but the fact that the same book is in both worlds has to mean something, given what they heard from Lu Han last night. Kris is almost afraid to open it. On the one hand, the book might tell them where they need to go next. On the other...well, that's no different. If they know where to go, their quest continues, everything coming to a head when they catch up with Suho, Sehun, and the mysterious sixth Summon. Kris doesn't know if he's ready for that.
Then again, the potential death and rebirth of the world is probably not something for which one can ever be ready, so all they can do is forge ahead and hope for the best. He reaches for the book.
It's not exactly lightweight bedtime reading material. The bulk of the pages comprise long, detailed articles about different types of butterflies, accompanied by photographs and diagrams. Kris flips through them quickly, skimming for anything relevant with the others peering around his shoulder, checking for anything he misses.
He should've turned to the back to begin with. Glued to the inside of the back cover is a long, folded sheet of paper bearing the symbols from their rings - those he's seen, and those which have not yet appeared in their dreams, twelve in all. There's a mutter from behind, and Kris knows it must be Jongin informing Lu Han. The scimitar-wielding Summon doesn't appear, though this must surely be of interest to him.
The paper unfolds to reveal a world map on the other side. Kris traces their journey across the continents with his fingertip, beginning at Fort Condor, not so many days ago. Then to Junon, across the ocean to Costa del Sol, from the desolate North Corel to the Gold Saucer, through the Corel Desert and past Gongaga to Cosmo Canyon, and finally to Nibelheim, here at the foot of Mt. Nibel, where the time has come to decide on their course. The map displays not only towns but landmarks, like the mythril mines near Midgar, and the old railroad that used to run through Mt. Corel. There are places Kris has been before, such as his hometown of Wutai, over in the far west, and places he has never even heard of, like Mideel, down in the south-east corner of the map.
But there's also one place he's visited - and Baekhyun too, though not by choice - and it looks like he might have to make a return trip. There's not much marked on the map of Gaia's northernmost continent. He'd gone to stay at the Icicle Inn on the trail of a rumour - another ghost of a chance to find the secret to unlocking himself. He hadn't found anything but a near-death experience in the ice and snow - that, and his smart-mouthed but somehow endearing Summon, which had made the trip worthwhile after all. He's never seen any reason to travel back up there. It had been hard enough to get there in the first place, hitching rides on ships going to and from Wutai with rich tourists who wanted to go skiing and skating. Beyond winter sports, hot springs and some reasonably attractive forests, the northern continent's not got much to recommend it to visitors.
It still doesn't. But they're hardly tourist material, and neither's the landmark they want to see.
"Look!" Jongin reaches for the map at the same time as Kris's finger trails north; they cover the symbol together.
Jongdae nudges them both aside so he can see, having to step between them since he can't see over them. Yixing squeezes in too; his mouth falls open when he realises what they've found.
There, carefully drawn in black ink, is a tree. Or rather, the tree. The Tree of Life.
"It's just as I remember it from the dreams," Yixing says. "Only without the red storm and all of us fighting."
"That's probably kind of tough to draw on a map," Jongdae says.
It's right there. In the middle of nowhere, according to the map, but there. It's real. It exists, somewhere outside their heads, in a world with chocobos and materia and stupid plays about Evil Dragon Kings. They can find it.
"The professor must've found this," Jongin says. He holds up a pad of blank paper, sitting on the table next to a tub of writing implements. The top sheet looks scratched, indentations worn in where someone's pressed too hard. "You can see the lines where someone's been drawing on the pad with a pencil. I think he drew a copy."
Shading in the top sheet with a pencil confirms that yes, someone has drawn a sketch of the northern continent. The tree symbol is particularly heavy, its significance emphasised layer by layer by the artist.
"Why not just take the book?" Kris wonders aloud. "Or at least tear out the map?"
Jongin looks horrified. "It's a library book."
"In an abandoned library, hidden way down here where most people would never find it," Kris points out, but he's grateful, in a way, that the professor has been considerate enough to leave the map behind. He picks up the pencil to make a copy of his own, but Yixing rushes to take the pad away from him, a gentle dig at his lack of artistic ability. Fine. Yixing can draw the map. Kris needs to figure out how they're going to get there.
"We can't go by ship," he says. "The port at Costa del Sol will be deserted now, and that's the only one on this continent. Right?" He looks to Jongdae for confirmation.
"It's the only port," Jongdae says, "but...it's not the only way off this continent."
He's wearing the same expression Jongin does when anyone mentions Wall Market, which suggests that he'd rather not be talking about this at all, but it's a necessary evil. If he knows something, he's going to have to share, or they'll be stuck here until the port re-opens. If it re-opens. Kris doesn't think the escapees are likely to be returning any time soon, not without a guarantee that it's safe to do so.
"I'm sorry," he says to Jongdae, "but..."
"I know." Jongdae nods reluctantly. "If we can't go by sea, we can go by air. Suho will have to do the same thing, whether he knows it yet or not."
"By air?" Jongin asks, eager as a child who's just been promised a new toy. "Is there a helipad here?"
"No helicopters, and not here," Jongdae says. "If you want to fly farther and faster than one of those will take you, you want a plane, and there's only one place you can go. Rocket Town."
Jongdae's hometown, where enterprising young adventurers launch themselves into space, never to return. Kris hasn't forgotten Hargo's words. It's not a town for happy endings.
"Will you take us there?" Kris asks, conscious that he's asking Jongdae to return to the home he'd been glad to abandon two years ago, and hating himself for it, but knowing there's nothing else he can do. They have no other options.
"You won't persuade a pilot to go with you," Jongdae says. "You'll need me to fly the plane." He closes the book, now that Yixing's finished with the map, and strokes the wings of the butterfly on the cover. The eyes stand out, nature's patterns creepy and intricate enough to lose oneself in forever. Jongdae's face says he'd prefer that as a course of action, but when he looks up from the cover to meet Kris's eyes, his resolve is clear.
He'll drive them to Rocket Town. Fly them north, past Bone Village and ruined cities, past the snowfields and frozen lakes, past Icicle Inn and the furthest point north that Kris has ever been. The Tree of Life is out there, waiting for them to find it.
But that's not all that's out there. The strange red force has followed them west, stealing precious moisture wherever it finds it and leaving the towns dry and empty, all life destroyed. It's already beaten them in the past, in another world. Will they be able to find the others in time to save the Tree of Life in this one?
Fandom: EXO (sort of fused with Final Fantasy VII)
Series: Phoenix Down (#8)
Rating: PG-13
Genre: AU, crossover (sort of)
Word count: 22,666
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit.
Part 2
Driving Force 3/3
A hasty comparison over breakfast reveals that for once, they've all had more-or-less identical dreams save their differing viewpoints. Jongdae's still getting used to it.
"I used to be around materia all the time in my old job," he says, waving his fork for emphasis. "All the time. The Summons sold quickly, and we didn't get them in much to start with, but I still saw them. And I had no clue."
"Neither did they," Kris says. "Or you'd have known about this years ago."
"Yeah, but last night I sat and talked with people I used to sell. Do you have any idea how awkward that is?"
Yixing, sitting on the bench next to Jongdae, gives him a reassuring pat on the thigh. "I don't think they're going to hold that against you."
Jongin agrees. "We've all had to change the way we think about Summons."
"You more than most," Kris says, and Jongin blushes. "Did you work things out last night?"
"When I woke up in the middle of the night they were snuggled together in the other bed," Jongdae says, snickering. "I think they worked it out, yeah..."
If looks could kill, Jongdae would be a corpse sitting across from Jongin, who declines to offer any further information on the current situation with Lu Han. It's none of Kris's business anyway, except that things will go much smoother if everyone's talking to each other and there are no resentful undercurrents that could hamper communication at critical moments.
"Good," he says. "Then we can go."
After breakfast they load their gear and chocobos back into the van. Elder Hargo waves a goodbye from up on the plateau; Kris waves back before sliding into the front passenger seat. Jongdae's insisting on taking first stint behind the wheel again. It's not that long a drive, he assures them, and he's correct: a little further through the mountains, over some grassy plains, across another river and back to the grass - less than two hours of travel. They have few interruptions en route. Mostly, the Nibel Wolves glare at them from a safe distance and stay out of their way. Toasted corpses of a couple of their kin indicate the reason for their unusual reticence.
The tracks lead straight into town. When they park, leaving the chocobos in the van, there's no sign of the buggy, but there's not much else either. The shops and houses seem in decent enough repair, and there's a dog running around the water tower in the centre of town, but the people are only scattered, skittish movements in the corners of their eyes, darting through doors and slipping down sidestreets without even looking their way. It's quite a shock after the lively warmth of Cosmo Canyon.
"Don't waste your time trying to talk to anyone," Jongdae advises. "They're not keen on strangers around here."
After trying to make eye contact with three different people and having them deliberately ignore him, Kris gives up. "So I'd noticed. You know where the library is?"
"I've never been in, but yeah. It's in the old mansion up those steps there. It's..." Jongdae grimaces. "It's a pretty weird building. I hear it used to be full of mad scientists conducting experiments, or something, until they ran out of funds and it became a public library instead."
Jongin shudders, looking over his shoulder with apprehension at the gigantic building up ahead. It's surrounded by high stone walls, though not nearly as high as those of the mansion itself, which are dotted with windows - a series of dark, even eyes watching over them. "Are you sure it's safe to go in? It looks kind of..."
"Haunted?" Yixing suggests. "You probably don't have to worry, Jongin. I don't think ghosts come out in the morning."
"Nah, they're late risers," Jongdae says. "No self-respecting spectre would start haunting before mid-afternoon, easy."
"As Jongin should know, since he already sleeps like the dead." Kris's joke does nothing to make Jongin any less wary, but the reality is that if any ghosts do actually try to threaten him in the library, Lu Han, in all likelihood, will find a way to exorcise them before they get anywhere near him, whether scimitars can cut ghosts or not.
The spiked metal gates, while slightly ajar, are hardly welcoming. "If they don't like to talk to strangers here, will the librarians even let us in?" Kris asks as they mount the steps.
Jongdae casts a look up at the solid oak door, which is about twice his height and five times as intimidating, what with all the carvings of huge-fanged monsters snarling directly at them. "If they don't, I'm pretty sure we can take on a couple of librarians. I mean, Yixing beat up a Land Worm with an umbrella."
But there are no librarians in sight when they enter the building - and at first glance, no library either. It looks like no maintenance has been performed on the interior for years: the peeling wallpaper is more grey than blue-green, and stained where trickles of rain have crept through cracks and down the walls, en route to matted carpets too dingy to reveal their original colour. The enormous oval windows, though murky, remain intact, but the wooden frames are filthy with mould and, like the bannisters, liberally coated with dust.
"If this is the state of the building, then what are the books going to be like?" Jongin wrinkles his nose at the decay. "Are you sure there's a library here?"
Jongdae points to a sign hanging next to a doorway on the left. It says: Children's Reading Room. "I'm not saying it's a place I'd ever want to hang out, but it's still a library."
"We're not going to find any maps in there," Kris says. "And probably no people either. Let's split up and search. You and Jongin take the downstairs rooms, and Yixing and I will head upstairs. The maps are probably in a section by themselves somewhere."
The first floor is no less creepy than the ground floor, mostly home to remnants of the original furnishings and boxes stacked to the ceiling. One room is so thick with overgrown plants, Kris doesn't even bother trying to force his way inside. He figures the actual library part of the building must be on the ground floor alone, with the upper floor used purely for storage, because none of the rooms they've checked so far have contained so much as a single sheet of paper.
He turns to suggest to Yixing that they help with the search downstairs instead, but a small, decagonal mirror flies between them, aiming straight for Kris's face. He draws back, staring at his own visage as it passes by. The mirror spins, turns, and tries again.
"I don't think we've got time for you to be admiring yourself in the mirror," Yixing says, heading for the door.
Kris groans at him, dodging another attack. "In case you hadn't noticed, it's trying to slice my face off!"
"It is?" Yixing turns, staring quizzically at the silvery shape before launching himself forward, staff in hand. He strikes the mirror dead-centre. Sharp, shining shards explode outwards from the impact, littering the floor with slivers.
"It was," Kris corrects himself.
They encounter another half-dozen of the pesky little things, mostly swatted by Yixing before Kris can even draw his sword; from the crackling sounds and scent of ozone drifting up the stairs, they're not the only ones running into trouble. Jongdae must be using his Bolt materia.
Kris shares a glance with Yixing, who holds out a hand as if to say 'it's your call'. To go down and help, or trust that Jongin and Jongdae can take care of themselves just fine without reinforcements. "We keep searching," he decides.
But the decision's not his to make, as it turns out. As they're about to open the door to the next room, Jongin comes running up the stairs towards them, Jongdae hot on his heels.
"We heard breaking glass," Jongin explains, slightly breathless. "Lots of it. Are you all right?"
"Not even a scratch," Kris assures him. "Thanks to Yixing. Was there trouble downstairs?"
Jongdae nods. "Some weird floating pumpkin things...oh, and this male model type hanging out on a pendulum. He made the mistake of looking too long in Jongin's direction. It didn't end well."
"I don't know how Lu Han could tell," Jongin says mournfully. "He could've been harmless."
"He tried to slice me open with his pendulum while leering at you," Jongdae says. "'Harmless' isn't really the word I'd use to describe him."
Jongin concedes that Pendulum Guy probably didn't have the best of intentions. He fills them in on the search, which has so far revealed plenty of bookcases, but all of them empty. "The shelves are dusty too," he says. "They haven't held books for a while."
"It's like someone cleaned the place out," Jongdae says. "All the furniture's here, but there aren't any books. There's a pretty nice piano, though..."
"We haven't had any better luck up here," Kris says. "Only a few more left to try."
He pushes open the next door, which looks like it might once have been someone's sewing room. There's a dusty plastic sewing machine in one corner, with baskets of moth-eaten fabrics lining the walls. There's a bookcase here too, but while this one's not actually empty, all it contains are patterns for black hooded robes, with the same set of four numbers and directions scribbled all over them. They're not terribly exciting.
Slightly more exciting is the giant grey safe next to the bookcase, which is even taller than Kris.
"You don't suppose they'd be keeping maps in there, do you?" Yixing says. "The professor would probably still be here, trying to open it."
Jongin approaches the safe to take a closer look, then shakes his head. "If you want it open, don't look at me. I don't do combination locks."
"You do other locks?" Kris asks, surprised.
"I guess I never told you how I acquired Lu Han's orb, did I?"
Now's not the right time to ask, but Kris makes a mental note to enquire at a later date. Jongin looks embarrassed, but also sort of proud, and if he can pick locks, that's the kind of information that could come in handy one day - much like Yixing's mastery of that deadliest of weapons, the umbrella.
"We're definitely not going to find anything if we spend the rest of the day trying to figure out the combination," Jongdae says. "You've seen what they're keeping in this place - who's to say there's anything of value in there?"
Kris gives the handle an experimental tug, grimacing at the way the cold metal bites his fingers. The door doesn't budge. "If not, why keep it locked?"
He contemplates trying to force the safe. From the state of the mansion, it's evident that the building is no longer in use as a library, or indeed as anything friendly to humans, so it's unlikely anyone will be coming after them with a repair bill. While he tries to gauge whether or not his sword will do the trick, Yixing wanders up with a sheaf of papers in his hand. The black robe patterns from the bookcase. He points to the numbers and directions written in faded blue ink next to the pictures.
"Seriously?" Jongdae says, shaking his head in disbelief. "Who writes down their safe combination and just leaves it lying around for anyone to find?"
"People with bad memories?" Yixing suggests, speaking with the voice of experience. "Should we try it?"
"Might as well," Kris says, so Yixing leaves his staff against the wall and positions himself next to the safe, turning the dial with one hand as he holds the papers in the other. No one makes a sound, not even the irrepressible Jongdae.
Three things happen when the safe unlocks. Yixing half-turns to give Kris a thumbs up and a smile, a bright red materia orb tumbles out from the slowly-widening gap between door and safe...
...and the entire door explodes outwards, sending Yixing flying into the opposite wall. An ominous crack resounds throughout the room, and Kris knows that can't be good. Panicked, he turns to help his friend, but a startled yell from Jongin has his attention divided.
The Summon materia wasn't the only thing in the safe.
Kris momentarily forgets about Yixing. To be fair, no one could expect him to do otherwise, not when a gigantic red and purple monster has somehow just emerged from a safe less than a quarter of its size, and is glaring at them with burning yellow eyes. Even the smallest of the sharp teeth sticking out of its mouth is longer than Kris's forearm. Two arms, one a green claw, the other a yellow stinger, wave menacingly at them, enormous hands ready to pounce. It's between them and the Summon materia, and Kris doesn't know who it is, but he knows he can't leave them behind.
He can't leave Yixing either. Trusting the others to handle the monster, he rushes over to assess the damage. It's not looking good. Yixing's blood has left red, gory streaks on its way down the wall, ending with his crumpled form on the floor, skin split and leaking where the impact has shattered his skull. Kris catches sight of white shards peeking through the pulp that used to be the left side of his head, all blood and bone and battered flesh. Despair settles heavy in his heart. No Potion could cope with injuries on this scale. Yixing's still breathing - Kris can tell by the bubbles of blood on his lips - but for how much longer?
Who heals the healer?
Yixing's staff is still propped against the wall by the ruined safe. If Kris can just get to that Restore materia...
He rises quickly, ready to do whatever it takes to make it past the monster. They don't have much time. As he steps forward, Jongin stumbles into him while trying to dodge the flailing arms. Whatever they're up against has a powerful smack.
"I can't get near it," Jongin pants. There's a sizzling sound from across the room as lightning crackles from Jongdae's lance, eliciting a pained howl from the monster. "How's Yixing?"
"Bad," Kris says grimly. "We need his Restore materia, now."
He doesn't say 'dying'. He doesn't have to. The blood trails on the wall are plain as day, even in the gloom.
Jongin's face begins to crumple; he bites his lip resolutely and turns away from Kris, pounding his clenched fists together hard enough for the mythril in his gauntlets to clang. He storms forward, ducking the swipe of a ferocious green claw to weave his way closer to the monster's body, and lands a solid blow on its purple half.
Kris knows how strong Jongin is, and how much damage he can dish out, but the monster doesn't even seem to notice it's been hit. It continues to flail as Jongin pummels its purple leg. Kris can't make it close enough to help, settling for trying to take out the green arm as it snaps past him. He slices once, twice, to no effect. Jongdae can't use his Bolt materia with Jongin in range; the lightning spells stop, but his lance, at least, appears to be of some use when he stabs the monster viciously in its yellow arm. It screams, lashing out wildly with the green arm and slamming Jongin face-first to the floor.
There's no time. Physical attacks seem to be sort of hit and miss, they only have one Magic materia between them and the only magical items they have are in Yixing's bag - which is somewhere beneath him, and Kris isn't going to try to find it. He has to call Baekhyun - but what if even Baekhyun isn't enough? What if Baekhyun stands there judging the monster and it catches him with its claw, shredding the disdainful sneer right off his face as it tears him to pieces? Baekhyun's a Summon, and this is what he does...but Baekhyun's also a person, and what right does Kris have to expose him to danger?
"A little help over here?" Jongdae yells, and that's when Kris realises he's frozen in place, sword still before him.
"Coming!" he calls back. He has to at least get Jongin out of the way so Jongdae can use his lightning spells, or they're never getting through.
Keeping low to the ground, sword arm raised overhead, he reaches for Jongin's prone body. There's a puddle of blood forming beneath him, leaking from what looks to be a broken nose. That's not all that's broken, Kris notices when he locks an arm over Jongin's waist. One arm is bent back at an angle that can't possibly be healthy. The left arm, where Lu Han's materia orb resides in a leather and mythril gauntlet. Lu Han, who should be here dicing the monster into bite-size chunks, but who can't come out because it's too soon after showing up to terrorise some pendulum-swinging model who'd dared to leer at Jongin. He must be kicking himself now, if he has any idea what's going on, and with Jongin unconscious Kris has no clue how much that might be.
Moving Jongin probably won't do his injuries any good but it's better than the alternative, and really, Kris has no choice but to begin dragging him across the floor, out of Jongdae's firing line. He can do this. He'll move Jongin to the door, then he'll get up and help Jongdae, he'll get the staff, he'll-
He'll watch helplessly as the yellow arm spears Jongdae through the stomach.
Jongdae slides backwards off the yellow stinger, slicking it with his blood as he falls to the ground. His lance clatters to the floor beside him. That's three down.
Leaving Jongin where he is, Kris runs over to Jongdae and immediately wishes he'd skipped breakfast. There's nothing like seeing a friend's intestines poking through his skin to turn the stomach. Though white-faced and shaking, Jongdae's clinging to consciousness, hands pressed over his torn, bloodstained shirt, trying - and failing - to keep himself from spilling all over the floor. He opens and closes his mouth a couple of times but nothing comes out; Kris leans in, thinking perhaps Jongdae is trying to impart a dying message.
"The...re...red...s-side," Jongdae slurs, managing a faint smile at Kris. "Hit...red..."
His eyes roll back in his head before he can finish his sentence. Kris doesn't even have time to check if he's still breathing or not before the yellow arm, still dripping blood, darts towards him. He brings his sword up to block. The stinger crashes against the metal. It's softer than Kris would've expected - moreover, more vulnerable too. The angle's too poor to do any real damage but the monster screams, withdrawing the arm. When Kris checks, there's blood on his sword, and it's too green to belong to Jongdae.
That's the first wound he's managed to inflict on it. Jongdae's lance had successfully speared it too. Attacking the green arm, on the other hand, had accomplished nothing...but the green arm's on the purple side, and Jongin's attacks on that side had been futile. The yellow arm's on the red side, and if Jongdae's telling him to hit the monster there...
While the monster cradles its wounded arm, Kris takes advantage of the momentary lull in the fight to advance, hoping to reach the red half of its body and preferably stab something vital. It can be injured: he's seen that now. It's all up to him.
He nearly makes it. Unfortunately, only one of the arms is injured. The other comes around to catch him from behind, raking its giant green claw down his back and tearing his sheath straight off his shoulder. Pain screams down his nerves, sending him to his knees, so overwhelmed he loses his grip on his sword. It's worse than being shot. He can feel the scrape of each individual talon, his back host to a variety of levels of pain, each of a different intensity and none weaker than agony. Blood soaks into his shirt, dripping towards his waistband. He can't move. He wants to, oh how he wants to, but his legs refuse to push up from the floor. Stay down, his body's telling him. Give up. Lie down. What else can you do?
But everyone's counting on him. He's the leader. He's responsible for them. He has to...he has to...
An unexpected warm glow from the door interrupts Kris's moment of anguish. Feebly, he turns his head towards the source of the light. It's...Yixing.
In a manner of speaking. Yixing's no longer lying in a broken heap on the floor. He's fully upright, shimmering with a pale turquoise light and smiling serenely at his own arms. Such serenity is, perhaps, surprising, given that they are not precisely arms any longer. Human arms, as a rule, do not terminate with hooves.
Kris forgets his pain as he watches the incredible transformation, too fascinated to pay any heed to his own body. Yixing leans forwards to drop his arms to the ground, hooves clattering on the floor. His legs have changed also, and as he arches his back his remaining bloodstained clothes vanish, giving way to the body of a pale white horse.
No, not a horse. As Yixing's face elongates, stretching out in front, and his ears sharpen, rounding to points, something else grows too. A horn, spiralling tall and white from the centre of his new, equine forehead. Yixing has become a unicorn.
The unicorn whinnies once and touches his horn to the ground. The turquoise light surrounding him intensifies, becoming brighter and spreading further until it fills the entire room. Kris feels so warm. The light bathes his wounds, soothing the gashes in his back. Blood no longer trickles down his skin. He breathes deeply, thinking that this must be it, the end has come, and he's now in a place beyond pain, beyond worldly cares, and all that's left for him to do is pass on in peace, all his troubles a thing of the past. He bids a mental farewell to his companions, wishing them the same tranquility and comfort being granted him. He can close his eyes, and sink down, and...
A poke in the shoulder from a unicorn's horn is not conducive to a restful sleep. Kris reluctantly opens his eyes to find that Yixing's not the only one to retreat from death's door. Jongin's on his feet again, both nose and arm back in alignment, and his blood has vanished from the floor. Similarly, Jongdae's torn shirt, now free of bloodstains, reveals only a bare, flat stomach, not a gaping abdominal wound, and his lance is back in his hand.
The comfortable warmth fades, and with it, some of the haze lifts from Kris's mind. Perhaps it's a trifle early to relinquish his hold on life, after all. The unicorn butts him in the shoulder - with his nose, this time, not his horn - and Kris takes the hint, rising to his feet. There's not even a twinge left to remind him of his injury.
He turns to pet Yixing on the nose. The timing's somewhat unfortunate; Yixing changes back just as Kris's hand reaches him, meaning his nose is now much shorter and no longer where it once was. All traces of the turquoise light fade with the last of the transformation.
"It was nice to be able to heal without materia," Yixing says, not sounding too disturbed by his unexpected change, "but I think I'd rather not go through that again."
Kris heaves a relieved sigh, grasping him warmly by the shoulder. "That makes two of us."
Yixing smiles at him, and Kris thinks there are some things he's just never going to understand about their past, whether he remembers it or not. Yixing's just saved them all with some sort of miraculous power - by turning into a unicorn. Kris hopes no one else transforms into anything. He's still processing his own metamorphosis into a dragon.
"I hate to interrupt your warm and fuzzy moment," Jongdae says, "but that thing's not going to be licking its wounds forever. Didn't you hear me tell you to attack the red side?"
Oh yeah. Back before the pain. "I heard," Kris says. "I just didn't get a chance to do anything about it."
"The red side?" Jongin rubs a hand over his now-healed nose. There's no evidence it was ever broken. "Allow me."
He teleports in close to the monster, keeping just distant enough to strike the red half with a roundhouse kick. This time, his attack produces the desired result, and Jongin follows it up with further assaults.
"I noticed that was the only side that seemed to take damage," Jongdae explains as he and Kris dash forward to help Jongin with their respective weapons. It's difficult to hear him over the pained howls.
Holding his sword with both hands, Kris plunges it deep into the monster's side. It's squishier than he really wants to think about, and he's pretty sure he's doing some damage there. "Good job spotting that," he says to Jongdae, who grins as he takes his own turn spearing the creature.
They're forcing it back towards the ruined safe, little by little. It's still attacking, but that's okay - after being healed, Kris feels like he could keep this up forever, like he hasn't been travelling for days and was never at risk of being clawed to death. From the looks of the others, they feel the same way. No longer pale, Jongdae's cheeks are suffused with colour from his exertions; Jongin's once-broken arm never stills as he pounds the monster's hide.
The yellow arm flies over their heads; the monster stops fighting and covers its eyes. Maybe this is it. Maybe they've won. No one moves, waiting to see if the creature will fall. It begins to shake, vibrating from its shaggy head down to its multicoloured, mismatched feet. Kris picks up the tremors through the floorboards, planting his feet wider to keep his knees from knocking together.
Yixing takes advantage of the momentary pause to retrieve his staff from the wall, then darts back to observe from a safer distance. Kris considers doing the same when the shaking abruptly stops and the monster flings its arm away from its eyes. It's no longer yellow. Nor is it pointed.
Kris throws himself sideways to avoid being lashed with a second green claw. The monster is asymmetrical no more, the red and yellow side now a mirror image of the purple and green. Maybe that makes it half-dead? So he hopes, anyway.
It doesn't fight like it's half-dead, though. Jongin has to teleport to escape being sucked down into the floorboards, as the creature throws a burst of Earth magic in his direction. Mini earthquakes pepper the room, keeping them from getting close enough to use their weapons. One false step and they'll fall through to the ground floor. When Kris catches Yixing's side with his elbow he realises they're being herded towards the centre of the room. Jongin keeps moving but even he's running out of places to stand.
"I've got this!" Jongdae yells, holding up his lance with the Bolt materia pointing towards the monster. He unleashes a blast of lightning, catching the monster full in the face.
Kris's heart leaps when the earthquakes stop. "Again!"
Jongdae fires a second time, then a third. Sparks crackle through the air, flashing bright in the gloom. The monster glows red, shuddering again, hissing as the spells sear its flesh. The entire floor rumbles with Earth magic. Kris sways, crouching down to keep his balance.
The fourth blast is enough to end it, vaporising the creature where it stands. It vanishes in a burst of red light.At last.
"I thought it was never going to die," Jongdae says shakily, loosening his deathgrip on his lance.
"Let's get out of here before it changes its mind and comes back for seconds," Kris says. He spots a red glint in the corner, where the Summon materia had rolled away during the earthquakes, and crosses the now-stationary floor to pick it up. He holds it out to Jongdae, hoping it's not another Baekhyun. "You've definitely earned this."
The others nod in emphatic agreement. Jongdae takes the materia with a weary grin, holding it up to read the name before popping the Baekhyun orb loose from its setting and handing it to Yixing, who has an empty space in his staff. He slots the new Summon into his lance. "Looks like we've just found Zitao."
Only three left to go. They're one step closer to reuniting as twelve - but also to a cataclysmic event, and it's with equal parts excitement and apprehension that Kris greets the news that they've picked up their fifth Summon. "Don't call him out yet," he advises Jongdae. "We might need him before we leave here. We still haven't found any maps."
One glance at the wreckage of the safe is enough to tell there's nothing of interest there. That leaves a couple of rooms on the far right of the passage: a decaying sitting room, and an equally decrepit bedroom with more bedbugs than Kris cares to think about. There's a bookcase in the bedroom but it's entirely filled with shoeboxes. Gingerly peeking into a few of them confirms that there are no maps here, either, and this is the last room.
"What now?" Jongin asks, looking to Kris for answers. "Maybe the professor came here and didn't find anything?"
"I don't know." Kris shakes his head, at a loss for what to do. "If he left here without knowing where to go, he could be anywhere by now."
"Not anywhere," Jongdae says. "He's running out of places to go on this continent, unless he retraces his steps, and I think we'd have noticed."
"Costa del Sol is out." Yixing counts them off on his fingers, leaning back against the curved wall next to the bookcase. "I don't think they'd have gone back to the Corel Desert since there aren't any trees-"
He breaks off with a cry, clutching at his staff for balance as the wall slides away behind him, revealing a spiral staircase leading down into the dark. It's not the most obvious place for a door. Kris wonders if it's been opened recently.
"Guess we haven't checked everywhere after all," Jongdae says, clapping Kris on the shoulder. "After you."
It's a long way down. They wedge the sliding door open with a chair, just in case. Jongin carries a lantern they spotted in the sitting room, allowing them just enough light to see the occasional bat. The staircase is too cramped for them to give battle; Jongdae tries to poke the bats with his lance but it's as effective as swatting mosquitoes in the swamp, and the pesky winged creatures continue to swoop around their heads.
At least the bats are a distraction from Jongin's mutterings, which seem to be an exasperating conversation with Lu Han. Far as Kris can tell, Lu Han still can't materialise or he'd be beside them, so he's fretting telepathically over Jongin's recent near-death experience. Which would be fine, except that the rest of them are stuck hearing Jongin's side of it and there are some things about their relationship that Kris has no desire whatsoever to know.
After enough spirals to make them dizzy, the stairs straighten out, the final flight leading straight down into a long tunnel. Kris tries not to look too closely at the floor. Those can't really be bones lying against the wall, can they? He doesn't want to check. In any case, they're not maps.
Two doors await them at the end of the tunnel. The leftmost is locked, but the one on the right opens easily; Jongin lets out a little cheer when he locates a light switch on the wall. The overhead light isn't that bright, but it doesn't have to be - it shows them exactly what they want to see, which is a room full of well-stuffed bookcases.
"Maybe all the books from upstairs are down here now," Yixing says, running a finger along the edge of the nearest shelf. "These cases weren't built to hold so many."
Even the shortest bookcase towers over Kris, and all of them have shelves bowed from the weight. There's only one ladder in sight - this could take a while. Fortunately, there are a few chairs clustered around the table in the centre, too, and they look sturdy enough to climb on.
"Let's split up," Kris says. "Everyone take a case and look for..." He trails off, because really, he has no idea what he's expecting to find. "Anything that might be useful."
"You're such a dependable leader." From anyone else that would definitely be sarcasm, but Yixing looks so sincere while speaking that Kris half-believes it.
The library's in marginally better shape than the rest of the mansion. No monsters creep out of the shadows to attack them (although a few spiders do scuttle across the bookshelves, disturbed by the sudden influx of visitors), the carpets are a little brighter and the wood looks like it might survive the rest of the year. Kris diligently searches the bookcase nearest him, stretching as far as he can until even he is forced to climb on a chair. All the books on this one appear to be about urban development, with titles such as An Illustrated Guide to City Planning and Problems With Plate Construction in Midgar; he thinks it's unlikely that a Tree of Life would feature in such works but continues to search for anything that seems even remotely relevant.
He's just climbing down after finishing the top shelf when an eager, clearly very self-satisfied Jongin calls them all over to the table. It's covered in books, most of them containing more pictures than words.
"Taking a break to read comics?" Jongdae asks.
"Not this time." Jongin pushes the comics aside, dragging a far weightier tome to the centre. "I thought that if they were looking at maps, they might spread them out on the table. And there's no dust here, either."
The volume which has caught Jongin's attention has a pretty black butterfly on the cover, one with turquoise and orange eyes on its wings that clash horribly with the pink flower in the background. It's certainly no book of maps.
"I asked Lu Han," Jongin says. "This is the same lepidopterology book he ordered for his shop."
Probably not the exact same copy, but the fact that the same book is in both worlds has to mean something, given what they heard from Lu Han last night. Kris is almost afraid to open it. On the one hand, the book might tell them where they need to go next. On the other...well, that's no different. If they know where to go, their quest continues, everything coming to a head when they catch up with Suho, Sehun, and the mysterious sixth Summon. Kris doesn't know if he's ready for that.
Then again, the potential death and rebirth of the world is probably not something for which one can ever be ready, so all they can do is forge ahead and hope for the best. He reaches for the book.
It's not exactly lightweight bedtime reading material. The bulk of the pages comprise long, detailed articles about different types of butterflies, accompanied by photographs and diagrams. Kris flips through them quickly, skimming for anything relevant with the others peering around his shoulder, checking for anything he misses.
He should've turned to the back to begin with. Glued to the inside of the back cover is a long, folded sheet of paper bearing the symbols from their rings - those he's seen, and those which have not yet appeared in their dreams, twelve in all. There's a mutter from behind, and Kris knows it must be Jongin informing Lu Han. The scimitar-wielding Summon doesn't appear, though this must surely be of interest to him.
The paper unfolds to reveal a world map on the other side. Kris traces their journey across the continents with his fingertip, beginning at Fort Condor, not so many days ago. Then to Junon, across the ocean to Costa del Sol, from the desolate North Corel to the Gold Saucer, through the Corel Desert and past Gongaga to Cosmo Canyon, and finally to Nibelheim, here at the foot of Mt. Nibel, where the time has come to decide on their course. The map displays not only towns but landmarks, like the mythril mines near Midgar, and the old railroad that used to run through Mt. Corel. There are places Kris has been before, such as his hometown of Wutai, over in the far west, and places he has never even heard of, like Mideel, down in the south-east corner of the map.
But there's also one place he's visited - and Baekhyun too, though not by choice - and it looks like he might have to make a return trip. There's not much marked on the map of Gaia's northernmost continent. He'd gone to stay at the Icicle Inn on the trail of a rumour - another ghost of a chance to find the secret to unlocking himself. He hadn't found anything but a near-death experience in the ice and snow - that, and his smart-mouthed but somehow endearing Summon, which had made the trip worthwhile after all. He's never seen any reason to travel back up there. It had been hard enough to get there in the first place, hitching rides on ships going to and from Wutai with rich tourists who wanted to go skiing and skating. Beyond winter sports, hot springs and some reasonably attractive forests, the northern continent's not got much to recommend it to visitors.
It still doesn't. But they're hardly tourist material, and neither's the landmark they want to see.
"Look!" Jongin reaches for the map at the same time as Kris's finger trails north; they cover the symbol together.
Jongdae nudges them both aside so he can see, having to step between them since he can't see over them. Yixing squeezes in too; his mouth falls open when he realises what they've found.
There, carefully drawn in black ink, is a tree. Or rather, the tree. The Tree of Life.
"It's just as I remember it from the dreams," Yixing says. "Only without the red storm and all of us fighting."
"That's probably kind of tough to draw on a map," Jongdae says.
It's right there. In the middle of nowhere, according to the map, but there. It's real. It exists, somewhere outside their heads, in a world with chocobos and materia and stupid plays about Evil Dragon Kings. They can find it.
"The professor must've found this," Jongin says. He holds up a pad of blank paper, sitting on the table next to a tub of writing implements. The top sheet looks scratched, indentations worn in where someone's pressed too hard. "You can see the lines where someone's been drawing on the pad with a pencil. I think he drew a copy."
Shading in the top sheet with a pencil confirms that yes, someone has drawn a sketch of the northern continent. The tree symbol is particularly heavy, its significance emphasised layer by layer by the artist.
"Why not just take the book?" Kris wonders aloud. "Or at least tear out the map?"
Jongin looks horrified. "It's a library book."
"In an abandoned library, hidden way down here where most people would never find it," Kris points out, but he's grateful, in a way, that the professor has been considerate enough to leave the map behind. He picks up the pencil to make a copy of his own, but Yixing rushes to take the pad away from him, a gentle dig at his lack of artistic ability. Fine. Yixing can draw the map. Kris needs to figure out how they're going to get there.
"We can't go by ship," he says. "The port at Costa del Sol will be deserted now, and that's the only one on this continent. Right?" He looks to Jongdae for confirmation.
"It's the only port," Jongdae says, "but...it's not the only way off this continent."
He's wearing the same expression Jongin does when anyone mentions Wall Market, which suggests that he'd rather not be talking about this at all, but it's a necessary evil. If he knows something, he's going to have to share, or they'll be stuck here until the port re-opens. If it re-opens. Kris doesn't think the escapees are likely to be returning any time soon, not without a guarantee that it's safe to do so.
"I'm sorry," he says to Jongdae, "but..."
"I know." Jongdae nods reluctantly. "If we can't go by sea, we can go by air. Suho will have to do the same thing, whether he knows it yet or not."
"By air?" Jongin asks, eager as a child who's just been promised a new toy. "Is there a helipad here?"
"No helicopters, and not here," Jongdae says. "If you want to fly farther and faster than one of those will take you, you want a plane, and there's only one place you can go. Rocket Town."
Jongdae's hometown, where enterprising young adventurers launch themselves into space, never to return. Kris hasn't forgotten Hargo's words. It's not a town for happy endings.
"Will you take us there?" Kris asks, conscious that he's asking Jongdae to return to the home he'd been glad to abandon two years ago, and hating himself for it, but knowing there's nothing else he can do. They have no other options.
"You won't persuade a pilot to go with you," Jongdae says. "You'll need me to fly the plane." He closes the book, now that Yixing's finished with the map, and strokes the wings of the butterfly on the cover. The eyes stand out, nature's patterns creepy and intricate enough to lose oneself in forever. Jongdae's face says he'd prefer that as a course of action, but when he looks up from the cover to meet Kris's eyes, his resolve is clear.
He'll drive them to Rocket Town. Fly them north, past Bone Village and ruined cities, past the snowfields and frozen lakes, past Icicle Inn and the furthest point north that Kris has ever been. The Tree of Life is out there, waiting for them to find it.
But that's not all that's out there. The strange red force has followed them west, stealing precious moisture wherever it finds it and leaving the towns dry and empty, all life destroyed. It's already beaten them in the past, in another world. Will they be able to find the others in time to save the Tree of Life in this one?