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The Corel Desert is an arid and lonely place, without even a breath of wind to stir the sea of sand. Makes it tantamount to suicide to open a window - thankfully, the van's air-conditioning hasn't given up yet - but it's of immense help in tracking down Professor Suho and his resurrected companion. Yesterday's buggy tracks remain untouched. There's no other sign that the professor's been this way, doing whatever it is he intends to do with the stolen materia. Kris keeps his eyes fixed on the tracks and hopes that Suho knows where he's going.

Not that there appears to be anywhere to go. They've been driving for three hours now and the landscape hasn't changed at all. Sand, sand and more sand. Yixing's dividing his attention between the chocobos and the world outside, while Jongin's dozing in his seat, occasionally stirring to gulp down a mouthful of water. Chen - or Jongdae, as Kris now has to think of him - won't relinquish the wheel, not yet, but they're going to have to stop soon, if only to give his arms a rest.

"I promise not to wreck your van," Kris says after watching Jongdae attempt to work the kinks out of his shoulders while still driving, "so we could swap positions for a bit? I've never crashed a vehicle."

"Neither have I," Yixing pipes up from the back.

Kris snorts, casting half a glance over at him. "That's because you've never driven one."

"That's it." Jongdae brings the van to a halt and turns to face Kris. "No one's driving her but me. And especially not Yixing."

Yixing doesn't seem bothered by the slight. "One day my time will come," he says evenly, and Kris hopes that day's a long way off because he really doesn't want someone who's never driven before at the wheel. Not when they're in the middle of the desert, with four chocobos (one placid, one skittish, one wilful and one unbelievably smug), one sleepy young man who keeps muttering vaguely affectionate nonsense at his Summon (which would be embarrassing if any of them were paying attention), and one near-stranger they only met last night, who can't possibly have the best impression of them.

"Do you have any idea how big this desert is?" Kris asks Jongdae. "Because I don't, and I don't know how far we're going to have to drive until we reach the end of these tracks. I'm the reason we're out here in the first place, so you can at least let me spell you a little."

Jongdae opens his mouth, but his response is cut off by a mumbled "Are we there yet?" from Jongin, who has chosen this particular moment to wake up.

"Don't know where 'there' is," Jongdae says. "You can go back to sleep - after you pass me one of those water bottles."

Jongin does, handing one to Kris as well. "Has anyone seen a sword hilt while we've been driving?"

"Like the one lying next to you?" Kris says.

"Not yours." Jongin looks down the side of the seats, where everyone else is storing their weapons. "I've got a message from Baekhyun. Lu Han says there's a broken sword hilt with one of Baekhyun's materia orbs out here somewhere, and if we happen to see it, can we please pick it up?"

"I understood the second half of that," Jongdae says. "Would someone like to explain the first half?"

Three hours of travelling is long enough to tell a story, even one as disjointed and confusing as the tale they have to share, and Jongdae's borne with it well, even when they haven't been able to answer his questions. Kris had omitted the exact nature of Jongin's relationship with Lu Han, however, figuring that was for Jongin to share, if he wanted to. He doesn't know how much experience Jongdae has had with Summons, even with working in a materia shop back in Rocket Town, but a Summon communicating telepathically with his master has to be a rarity, or he'd have heard about it before. Certainly, Baekhyun's never shown any ability to project himself into Kris's head, for which Kris is extremely grateful.

"Lu Han talks to me in my head," Jongin says. "But I promise I'm not crazy."

"You're not crazy, Kris isn't suicidal..." Jongdae shakes his head, looking between them with such disbelief in his eyes that Kris almost wants to reiterate that he's not planning on ending his life, only restarting it. "So what are you, Yixing, other than a non-driver?"

"A healer." Yixing makes tiny waving motions with his fingers. "So if you accidentally zap yourself with your Bolt materia, I'll fix you up."

Jongdae grins, the cocky chocobo jockey back in the saddle for a moment. "My aim's better than that. I've been practising with it for two years."

"At the Gold Saucer?" Kris asks, surprised that anyone would need weapons in a theme park. Anyone not planning on fighting in the Battle Square, at least. But it's good to know Jongdae has experience. The rest of the party can only fight close-range, aside from their Summons - it'll be useful to have someone with Magic materia if they run into trouble.

"Back in Rocket Town." Jongdae takes a long draught from his water bottle. "I...a friend left me the lance, and the materia with it."

"He didn't need it?" Kris asks. It must've been a good friend. Materia's expensive, and the lance looks pretty pricey too.

"Not where he was going."

Kris doesn't ask him to elaborate. They all have their secrets, and Jongdae's just shut the door on his, good humour faded from sight, eyes sad and the faintest bit resentful. "Break's over," he says, and with that they're on the move again, rolling towards who knows where.

It's easy for Kris to lean his head back against the seat and gaze idly out the window when all the scenery's the same.

Until it isn't. A large, dark blur in the distance has him straining forwards to see. Is it moving? Is it a threat? He starts to reach for his sword as Jongdae slows the van.

"What is that?" Jongin grabs the headrests and peers between the seats, fully awake now, and Kris winces as the mythril studs on Jongin's gauntlets scrape his ear. He's got enough scars there already; he's not looking to acquire another.

"Does anyone else smell burnt meat?" Jongdae asks, wrinkling his nose. "But not like anything you'd want to eat."

It's faint, but the closer they get to the black marks the stronger it becomes. Kris blinks back water as his eyes begin to sting. He hopes the engine's not overheating. That's all they need, to break down in the middle of the Corel Desert. "Yeah. That's not from the van...is it?"

"It's coming through the vents," Yixing says. "From outside. I think it is burnt meat."

And lots of it, they discover when they pull up alongside. Land Worms, judging by the rings of fangs - the only body parts not charred to a crisp. Kris counts a dozen corpses on either side of the buggy tracks, each one a dark, greasy stain against the sand grains. "Looks like they stopped here for a bit," he says. "I see footprints."

"Who'd get out in the middle of the desert?" Jongin says.

"Even former corpses have to take a leak," Jongdae says. "Probably."

"The Land Worms would've come out then," Yixing says. He points to the buggy tracks, which continue beyond the footprints on a slightly different trajectory. "It seems the professor escaped successfully."

"Fire materia, you think?" It's Fire magic of some sort, Kris is certain, though whether it's from Magic materia or an item containing a Fire spell, he can't tell. Whatever it is, it has to be a very high level to do this much damage to so many monsters.

"Let's hope this guy doesn't use it on humans," Jongdae says. "I don't want to end up barbecued because of a stupid tree dream."

None of them do. Kris thinks it's unlikely the professor will attack them, based on Kyungsoo's opinion of the man, but of the mystery guy with the giant shuriken, he can't be sure. They do, at least, have numbers on their side. Not that numbers appear to matter - the dozen Land Worms are not the only corpses they find, following the buggy tracks. There are Cactuars too, scattered across the desert, some at such a distance from each other that Kris doubts they could've been hit by the same spell. The prickly green creatures are fast enough that it's hard to hit even one of them, let alone multiple Cactuars with the same attack.

"I don't like this," Jongin says after the third such batch of corpses. "There weren't even any footprints after those Land Worms. If they were attacked while they were still in the buggy, what's to stop the same thing from happening to us?"

"The professor's probably killed everything in the area," Jongdae says blithely. "Is there even anything left to come after us?"

Of course there is.

Jongdae sends everyone shooting forwards when he suddenly slams on the brakes - a natural response to the tall green and red monster that fills most of the windscreen. Kris's seatbelt is the only thing that keeps him from hitting the dash, pressing him down so forcefully that he struggles for breath. He's not the only one. Jongin's gasping in the back, panicking about a Malboro, and no, that's the last thing Kris wants to hear. He'd rather not spend any more time as a frog.

"It's not a Malboro," Yixing says, rubbing at his neck where the seatbelt's caught him. "Completely different body shape. I think it's a Flower Prong?"

"It is," Jongdae confirms. "They have them in the Battle Square. But they're from the jungle, not the desert!"

Unlike the Malboro, which resembles nothing so much as an extremely toothy bush, the Flower Prong is tall and thin, with a long red stem that morphs into green further up the body, leading to a spiky green head with a pink, murderous tendril on either side. It shrieks: broken nails on a blackboard, a high-pitched serenade of pure venom. Though the mouth is smaller than the Malboro's, it's still easily large enough to bite off their heads, and the sharp fangs inside make Kris very glad they're sitting in a metal cab.

On the other hand, that means the racket is deafening when the Flower Prong begins to beat its tendrils against the van.

"Pass me my sword!" Kris yells over his shoulder.

"Don't go out there," Yixing warns him. "It'll poison you before you even get close enough to slice it up."

They have Antidotes now, but Kris would rather not be poisoned again if he can help it, given how painful it was last time. (And there's the small matter of him turning into a dragon, which would certainly put a crimp in their plans.)

"I'm just going to drive over it," Jongdae says. "I was never very good with plants anyway."

Jongin lets out a quasi-hysterical squawk of laughter. "And the rest of them?"

"The rest...oh." Jongdae smiles tightly, peering out the driver's side door. Kris can't see how many of them there are, but from the look on Jongdae's face it can't be good. "Plan B, anyone?"

"I don't suppose you keep any weedkiller in here?" Kris asks.

"They're weak against Earth magic," Yixing says. "Jongin, can you-"

Before he even finishes asking the question, Jongin's rolled down the window on his side and thrust his right gauntlet outside. "Kyungsoo!"

The shrieks of multiple Flower Prongs are momentarily drowned out by a rumble so enormous it would put a thousand thunderclaps to shame. Beneath the wheels, the ground begins to shake, setting them swaying in their seats. Jongin hurriedly draws his arm back inside the vehicle and rolls the window back up as a stray tendril makes a grab for his wrist. The monster blocking the windscreen sways too, falling back far enough for them to see a slow-growing mound swelling up from the desert - small at first, but spreading rapidly across the sand. The ground shudders under the pressure, rising taller and taller until with an almighty crack it shatters, sending sand and the earth beneath flying in all directions.

In the debris that remains, Kyungsoo stands alone - a small, dark figure, arms crossed over his chest, glaring at the shrieking Flower Prongs for all he's worth. For a second Kris wonders if he's using Baekhyun's usual tactic, because if Kyungsoo's looks alone could kill, all those plants would've shrivelled instantly.

But Earth magic is far more violent than Baekhyun's withering gaze.

"Anger of the Land," Kyungsoo spits out before reaching down to sink both hands into the ground - deep, beneath the sand, all the way down to solid rock. Only magic could allow him to stretch so far. The Flower Prongs actually fall silent for a second as the sands begin to drain away, sinking into a wide gorge that emanates outwards from Kyungsoo. The crack in the desert floor expands with lightning speed. If it continues, they'll fall into it too, van and all.

And then it stops, leaving a rough circle of rock that begins where Kyungsoo's hands disappear into the ground. Slowly, he straightens up, and as he does, his end of the rock starts to rise.

"Is he going to...?" Jongin trails off, staring open-mouthed out the window.

"I think he is!" Jongdae then adds, somewhat hypocritically given that he's hardly blessed in the height department himself: "How's a little guy like that going to move all that rock?"

It's an impressive sight, even after the weird and wonderful things they've seen. Still looking as though he'd rather be anywhere else, Kyungsoo flips the entire slab of rock. The resulting crash is colossal. Not a single Flower Prong escapes - including the one that, up until a moment ago, had been hugging their windscreen. The rock misses the van by less than six inches.

They all still have their hands clapped over their ears when Kyungsoo picks his way across to the van, tapping on Jongin's window. Jongin quickly rolls it down. Kyungsoo's expression says he's not in the mood to be kept waiting.

"That was amazing!" Jongin gushes. He's a little loud, Kris thinks, but his own ears are still ringing so it's no wonder Jongin can't hear himself properly.

"Lu Han said you probably wouldn't call me out," Kyungsoo says. "I see he was wrong. Again."

Jongin's face falls. "Sorry," he says, slightly quieter now. "I wouldn't have, but we needed Earth magic, and-"

Kyungsoo sighs, features softening to permit a trace of a smile. "It's a good thing you're cute."

Jongdae cuts through Jongin's embarrassed flustering to say: "Not that I'm not impressed, but you think maybe you could cut it a little less close next time?" He strokes a loving hand over the dashboard. The van appears to have escaped without so much as a scratch, although the giant rock is blocking their path.

Corpses have eyes warmer and friendlier than Kyungsoo's. "You're going to have to back up," he says. "I suggest you hurry."

He vanishes back into his orb, leaving a forlorn Jongin pondering aloud about whether or not Kyungsoo dislikes him.

"You've already got one Summon who adores you," Kris says. "You don't need two."

"Touchy little guy, isn't he?" Jongdae puts the van in reverse, taking them back far enough to drive around the slab and continue their pursuit of the buggy tracks. "But useful."

The next time they stop, less than twenty minutes later, Kris insists on taking a turn behind the wheel. Jongdae offers only a token protest, finally acknowledging that perhaps trying to drive the whole way himself is a tad ambitious, especially after such a disturbed night. Shuffling around each other to switch positions should be more awkward than it turns out to be: there's something about facing death together that seems to mitigate the embarrassment factor of crawling over a near-stranger in the cramped front seat. Kris finds driving soothing, hands and feet moving of their own volition in patterns he hasn't used in a while, letting his mind switch off as he takes them onward. He's never been in control of a vehicle this large before, but Jongdae doesn't need to know that.

They pass another two sets of crispy corpses, burned so badly they can't even identify the species, before Kris spots something sticking out of the sand over to their left. Something relatively narrow, tapering in an oval pommel, shinier than the bodies of the dead monsters...

"Did you say we were looking for a broken sword?" Kris asks. "Because I think I see one." He turns them left, moving slowly towards the object without bothering to indicate because it's not as if there's any other traffic around.

"Yeah!" Jongin presses his nose to the window. "I can't see if it has any materia in it..."

As they draw nearer, it becomes apparent not only that yes, there is a Summon materia just above the cross-guard, but that it's half-buried by sand, and if they're going to pull it out, someone is going to have to leave the van to make the attempt. Volunteers are not immediately forthcoming.

"It's one of Baekhyun's orbs," Jongin says. "So maybe Kris should go?"

"Oh no." Kris shakes his head. "The last thing I need is another Baekhyun. One is more than enough."

"I'm sure he feels differently." Yixing reaches for his seatbelt. "I could do with stretching my legs anyway. Can you get any closer?"

Kris has always been better at driving than parking, but after a few tries he manages to position the van so when Jongdae opens the door on Yixing's side, Yixing will be less than three feet from the sword, and easily close enough to dive back inside if trouble comes. Or rather, when trouble comes, Kris corrects himself.

"Ready?" he asks.

Yixing nods, flexing his fingers in preparation. "Ready."

"Sooner you than me," Jongdae says, and flings open the door.

Both nimble and slender, Yixing slips quickly out of his seat, planting his feet on the ground as close to the van as possible. The rush of heat is immediate, far greater than when Jongin had rolled down his window earlier, and Kris automatically reaches for his water bottle. But the sweat trickling down the back of his neck isn't from the heat. This had better not take long.

Yixing taps the sword with one cautious finger, then recoils, hissing through his teeth. "Pass me a shirt or something? It's too hot for me to touch."

"Here!" Jongin tosses him the towel they've been using in the back.

"Thanks."

The sword's buried too deep for Yixing to loop the towel under the guard. He folds it over a few times, then seizes the grip with the towel for protection. He's facing away from the van, so Kris can't see his face, but from the strain in his arms it looks like the sword's not coming loose without a fight.

"I'll try to brush away some of the sand?" Jongdae offers, but he doesn't get the chance. Before he can even lean out the ground begins to shake, making the van quiver as the sand grains beneath slide to new homes.

Kris looks at the backseat. "Did you call Kyungsoo out again?"

Jongin holds up his hands in protest. "I didn't do anything!"

The ground's swelling again, but given how reluctant Kyungsoo was to emerge last time, Kris reasons it's probably not him now. Which is bad, because that means it's a-

"Land Worm!" Jongdae yells, scrabbling behind him for his lance.

A ring of fangs emerges from the sand two feet in front of Yixing, followed by a long, thick tube of yellow and green that disappears into the ground. Even partially submerged, the Land Worm's a danger to them. Kris needs to get to his sword. He reaches behind the seat to where all the weapons are lying together, but ends up bumping heads with Jongdae, who's doing the same thing, and Jongin, who's trying to get to the door. The Land Worm roars, warming already scorching air with a blast of hot, fetid breath that has them all shutting their eyes against the onslaught. Kris yells to Yixing to hang on and fumbles blindly, hoping not to cut himself on the blade.

There's a muffled thump, and then a squelch, and then another roar. Kris risks a glance back over his shoulder. Yixing's managed to reach his staff and is beating the monster under its chin every time it rears up.

No...not his staff...

Kris forgets all about his sword and watches in amazement as Yixing masterfully beats the Land Worm down, giving it such a hiding that it's forced to retreat back underground, leaving a gaping hole that the sand rushes to fill. He's never seen anything like it. He knew Yixing was good at stick fighting, but even without a proper weapon?

Jongdae scratches his head as Yixing turns around to give them a triumphant smile. "Where did the umbrella come from? I don't keep one in the van."

"A girl gave it to me when I was busking with Minseok at the Gold Saucer, but it was too long to fit in my bag so I put it down the side with the weapons," Yixing explains. He turns it over in his hands, staring at it as though seeing it for the first time. The frilly pink thing must be stronger than it looks - the frame isn't even bent. "I did wonder why my staff seemed shorter than usual..."

Kris idly wonders how much damage Yixing could accomplish with a chopstick, and if he'd even notice until the fight was over.

"We should get moving," Jongdae says. "He might come back with friends."

"Give me a minute," Yixing says. The Land Worm's arrival and subsequent retreat has dislodged so much sand that the ruined sword is almost fully exposed; he reaches down and tugs it free before climbing back into the van. The Summon materia gleams brightly despite so long exposed to the elements. Yixing strips it from the hilt, which he tosses back outside, almost losing the towel in the process.

Jongdae shuts the door, almost suffocating them all until Kris starts the engine and the airconditioning kicks in again.

"You should take this," Yixing says, pushing the newly-acquired Baekhyun materia between the headrests and completely ignoring the fact that Kris is trying to drive.

"I'm not his keeper," Kris says, mildly irritated. It's not like he has a hand free to do anything about it, anyway.

"If you don't want the materia, I'll take it," Jongdae says. "The rest of you all have Summons already, right? I've got a slot free." Jongin slides the lance forward so Jongdae can click the materia into the remaining slot; he makes no claim for it himself, but he's already got two Summons and it seems to Kris that Lu Han alone is more than enough for him to deal with.

There's a marked difference between the way Jongdae refers to Summons and the way the rest of them do it; Kris wonders how long it'll be before Jongdae becomes accustomed to thinking of them as people, not mere tools to be called and traded on a whim. He supposes he could always call Baekhyun out and ask him which one of them he'd prefer to go with, or get Jongin to relay a message via Lu Han. It's not that he objects to having a second Baekhyun materia, per se. He's never been in a position to have spare materia before, and having backups is certainly wise.

But if he has two Baekhyun materia orbs and calls for his Summon, which of them will emerge? Will it even matter? He knows, intellectually, that they'll be the same person. Maybe they'll dress a little differently, maybe one of them will have a different hairstyle, but they'll only be one man. In two bodies.

That's the part Kris can't quite wrap his head around. He'll let Jongdae have this second Baekhyun materia. It's less complicated.

He has no occasion to call Baekhyun out - neither of them do - for the remainder of their drive through the desert. Nothing else tries to attack them, even when they stop by a stray cactus so Jongdae can answer the call of nature. Yixing speculates that possibly, word of his prowess with an umbrella has been making the rounds underground, and none of the Land Worms are willing to risk taking him on. Kris thinks it's more likely that the professor's roasted so many of the Corel Desert's usual denizens that any monsters left alive have decided to wait until all the pesky humans have driven far, far away.

The buggy tracks in the sand eventually become indentations in thick green grass. Kris slows down, trying to gauge how far they go. "I thought the whole point of the professor taking the buggy was to go out in the desert," he says. "So why's he driven straight through?"

"Maybe he's finished whatever he drove into the desert to do?" Jongin suggests.

"Barbecue monsters," Jongdae says. "Yeah, definitely worth the trip, I can see why he'd do that."

"That's all we can see he's done," Yixing points out. "So perhaps it is that."

Kris rolls his eyes and stops the van so Jongdae, who has been dropping hints for the last who-knows-how-many miles, can get back behind the wheel. They switch quickly, because the tracks lead past the trees up ahead and there could be all kinds of monsters lurking in there. At least, Kris reasons, if Suho has been setting fires here as well, his path ought to be incredibly easy to follow.

They have to cross over a small river first; fortunately, the bridge holds their weight, though Jongdae holds his breath during the crossing, clearly none too optimistic. He's even more apprehensive when they do end up driving through the trees, bypassing a small town he identifies as Gongaga, but the rough path is wide enough to keep the van from being scratched - for the most part. He inspects it closely when they take a short break to let the chocobos out.

"How bad is it?" Jongin asks as he tries to keep his chocobo from running away. (There don't appear to be any squirrels in the area, but frogs seem to have the same effect.)

Jongdae runs a hand over the once-black paintwork, now dusty from the desert and in need of a good clean. "She'll live. I hope I can say the same for us."

"You can," Kris says confidently, giving Ace a good ruffle behind the wings, and coos at his chocobo: "Did you miss me, boy? I missed you a lot. Yes, I did. We'll go for a good run later, I promise."

Jongin shakes his head, giggling behind his hand. "Between you and your chocobo and Jongdae and his van..."

Yixing's chocobo is far less attention-seeking, happily eating greens from the hands of his rider while Emperor struts proudly through the trees, head held high, daring anyone to suggest his feathers might be in need of smoothing after his long ride in the back of the van. Jongdae goes over to him with a handful of greens; Kris follows, Ace in tow.

"Do you know what else is around here?" Kris asks. "As long as we're on a dirt path, we've got tracks to follow, but if we hit a paved road..."

Jongdae looks over at the trees. "There's another river to cross, a little further on, and then we head into some mountains. It's pretty isolated out there, but your professor might be headed for Cosmo Canyon."

"I hope so," Kris says fervently. "I hope his buggy breaks down there and he's stuck until we reach him."

"Feeling a little frustrated?" Jongdae teases.

Given how far they've come since Yixing first told them about the mysterious Summon materia at Fort Condor, Kris is long past mere frustration. "You have no idea."

He has to believe it's all worth it, however. If not, what motivation does he have to keep going? He's been set on this path since before he even knew the professor was one of them; that hasn't changed anything. Maybe just his opinion of Suho, or whatever his real name is. Before...maybe he wouldn't have thought twice about using any means necessary to obtain that materia. But now he has to assume that Suho's a good guy, because anyone who was with them before, fighting a losing battle to save the tree, has to be in the right. Right? He's one of them, whether he knows it or not, and that means Kris can at least try to explain what he wants with the materia.

Whether Suho will understand is another matter entirely, but that concern is for later. Much later. With their more pressing physical needs - and those of their chocobos - taken care of, they make to return to the van.

A frog stands in their way. Large, bright green and yellow, and determined to keep them from leaving. Jongin's chocobo balks immediately.

"It's just a frog," Jongin murmurs, trying to soothe him. "It's not dangerous."

"I don't know about that," Yixing says. "Kris was quite violent when he got transformed into a frog."

Kris gives the frog a sidelong glance. That's not a fate he'd wish on his worst enemy. "You think this one's been transformed too?"

"Somebody else can find out," Jongdae says. "I don't speak Frog."

When the frog opens its mouth wide, Kris half expects it to issue a retort to Jongdae's jibe, but what emerges is not speech at all, or even the croaking he'd find more realistic. It's music. Beautiful music. The sound swells large through the trees, far louder and more intense than such a tiny body should be able to produce. Kris stares at the frog, breathing between the notes, and starts to think that perhaps they don't need to go chasing the professor after all. That's far too complicated. Humans are always making things more difficult than they need to be. It's so much easier just to be a frog...

"Don't listen to it!" Kris hears Yixing shout, but he can't see what the problem is. Why shouldn't he listen to the frog? It's only music...

Another voice breaks in, making no attempt to harmonise with the frog - a low, rich melody in warm, clear tones that cut straight through the frog's song. Kris tries to turn to see who it is, but the music has him too disoriented to move properly and he stumbles, crashing gracelessly to the ground. Pain from the impact has him momentarily aware, enough to cast a sheepish look around and discover that the second voice belongs to Jongdae.

The frog's song becomes more frantic, its voice wavering higher as it increases the volume, but Jongdae ignores it. He's not tall or broad, not in the least physically imposing, but his voice gives him the presence of a giant and he holds firm, each note perfectly in its place as it slowly overwhelms the opposing song.

Yixing hooks an arm under Kris's and tries to tug him up. "Quick, while Jongdae keeps it busy!"

Kris can only blink in response, still muzzy from almost becoming a frog again, but Jongin grabs his other arm and helps Yixing manoeuvre him back into the van.

"Cover your ears," Yixing tells him before slipping out to deal with the chocobos.

Closing the door mutes both songs somewhat, offering Kris enough clarity to do as Yixing says. He watches silently as Jongdae looms over the frog, singing sweetly down at it as it tries to hop away. When he sees Jongdae's mouth close, he knows it's over. The frog retreats into the undergrowth and Jongdae grins as he slides back into the driver's seat.

"Thought we were going to lose you for a second there," he says to Kris. "Getting any urges to catch flies with your tongue?"

"Don't." Kris shudders. "One spell as a frog was more than enough for me, thanks."

"And that's probably why you're more susceptible to it now," Yixing says, poking his head between the headrests. "It's a good thing Jongdae was able to cancel out the frog's magic - we're all out of Maiden's Kisses, and I doubt one of mine would have the same effect."

Kris can't tell if Yixing's being serious about the kisses or not, but he thinks it's probably better for both of them not to have to find out. (Kissing a frog cannot possibly be pleasant, no matter what the children's stories say.) "So I should go around wearing earplugs from now on?"

"I wouldn't worry about it," Jongdae says cheerfully. "Once we get away from these trees you can forget about seeing frogs. There are much more dangerous things to look forward to in the Cosmo area, like those weird dragon creatures that can turn you to stone."

Of course that makes Kris feel so much better about it. But he thanks Jongdae anyway. Jongdae responds to all compliments on his singing voice with good grace.

"You're lucky I grew up in Rocket Town," he adds, starting up the van again. "There was always so much noise from engines that I had to sing at the top of my lungs if I wanted anyone to be able to hear me."

"Is that why you left?" Jongin asks. "The Gold Saucer's not exactly a peaceful place to live, either."

"I didn't leave to pursue a quiet life."

Jongdae's tone discourages further questions. That's okay. The important part of the past, as far as Kris is concerned, is the part they're discovering in their dreams. That's what will give them their answers. He knows what he needs to know about Jongdae, for now - anything else is extra. Maybe there's a lost loved one left behind, like Yixing, or a past that, if Kris is any judge of Midgar's Wall Market, has to be some flavour of shady, like Jongin. This isn't the time to ask. Right now Kris is more concerned with finding the professor - hopefully before nightfall.

Grass gives way to a brown, rocky path bordered by mountains. There are no burned monsters here, but there's nothing else, either, and Kris wonders why anyone would build a town in such a remote location. Even the chocobos in the back seem subdued. They outdrive a couple of lumbering Golems, and Jongdae leans out the window and zaps a Grand Horn with Bolt materia before he can destroy the van.

The skies are slowly turning pink from the setting sun, not that sinister red - not yet - as they follow the tracks to a town built into the side of a mountain. "Cosmo Canyon," Jongdae says, pulling up as close as he can to the set of steps leading up to the entrance, where a large sign says the same thing. There are windmills blowing gaily in the breeze, and ladders leading up to odd, rocky buildings hollowed out of the mountain itself. At the summit of the town, up on an enormous plateau, a large, spherical building houses a giant telescope.

It's a far cry from the glitz and glamour of the Gold Saucer, or the grim and murky industry of Midgar. Cosmo Canyon has none of their towers of plastic and metal, a town hollowed lovingly from nature, warm and earthy and welcoming.

But nature aside, they do appear to have a garage, and the first thing Jongdae does upon arriving is refuel the van. Kris eases himself out the door, grateful to stretch his legs. He examines the buggy's tracks. Theirs is not the only vehicle to have passed this way, but the tyre treads are pretty distinctive and there's no mistaking them, even in the fading light.

"Looks like they stopped here, then continued on through the mountains," he says to Yixing, who's come up beside him.

"I hope you're not suggesting we do the same," Yixing says. "Not tonight. We're roughly a day behind them, given when they started out, so they probably spent last night here."

Roughly a day means they could go a long way towards closing that gap if they drive through the night, but it's too dangerous to do that out here, with only the van's headlights for illumination and the possibility of monster encounters in the dark. Kris sighs and resigns himself to halting the chase for now. At least if the professor's still behind the wheel, he'll probably stop soon too.

"We're leaving at first light," he says.

Jongin, when told, reluctantly agrees to this on the understanding that someone will steer him out of bed and into the van, as he'll be walking in his sleep.

"You're already asleep," Yixing says, and Jongin laughs and makes a great show of being awake.

Now they've refuelled, the first order of business is to locate rooms for the night. Jongdae enquires at the garage to check that the Shildra Inn is still the only one in town, located above the Starlet pub, near the greengrocer's stall and directly opposite a raised mound housing a brightly burning fire - the Cosmo Candle, as he calls it. A group of children sit near the flames, toasting marshmallows on sticks and laughing amongst themselves. It's quite a homey affair, and despite the trials of the past few days Kris begins to feel at peace. No one is afraid here. No one's in a rush; no one's too busy to stop and talk.

"Cosmo Canyon's a very, very small town," Jongdae says once they've made stabling arrangements for the chocobos. "My parents used to bring me here when I was a kid, back when my grandfather still lived here. Everyone knows everyone else's business and strangers are big news."

"So we'll have people staring at us?" Jongin says glumly.

"Probably," Jongdae says, "but what I was getting at is: the guys we're looking for couldn't have done anything without half a dozen people knowing about it. It couldn't hurt to ask while we're here."

"Did you check with the mechanic?" Kris asks.

Jongdae nods. "Yeah, he knew who I meant, immediately. We're not going to miss this buggy when we see it. He said it's bright red and stands out a mile, and that they refuelled too - before they left this morning."

"Early?"

"About mid-morning? Maybe they're not in a hurry now."

Kris hopes not. There's a limit to how long this chase can continue before they run out of land to drive on, and he'd be a lot happier if he had some idea of their final destination. The buggy tracks head north, which means that if they keep going they'll eventually end up back where they started, only on the opposite side of the continent, with a large mountain range cutting them off from Costa del Sol.

Jongdae leads them into the pub and quickly checks that they're okay sharing rooms in pairs before he goes up to speak to the proprietor about accommodation for the night. With the arrangements made, he and Yixing take their gear upstairs while Kris and Jongin take a seat downstairs at one of the long wooden tables.

If the exterior of the town is homey, the interior is even more so, all warm brown earth and wood, the walls curving unevenly around the well-worn dirt floors. A single light hangs over the bar in the corner of the pub, but most of the illumination in the room comes from the candles set on the tables. Wooden barrels are piled up next to the stairs and in the corners, filled with alcohol that Kris knows better than to drink while they're travelling. He can see a door leading back to the kitchen; a sign above the bar describes the possible food options and if the choice is somewhat limited, Kris can't quite bring himself to care. It's just nice not to be in a moving vehicle.

What's not so nice is the staring. Every stool at the bar is occupied, and most of the other tables too, and Kris keeps catching glimpses of heads turning away from them. He gets it: they're strangers. It's not unexpected. He stretches out his legs under the table and leans back, trying to look casual to make up for the fact that Jongin looks so distant, his natural shyness leaving him with a dark, wary countenance when confronted by people he doesn't know.

"Anything new from Lu Han?"

That shakes Jongin out of himself, a little. "Not since we picked up that Baekhyun materia in the desert. I guess if he knew anything about where we're going, we'd know too by now."

"The professor has other Summon materia with him," Kris says, thinking it over. "Can't any of them tell enough about where they are to give us a clue?"

"They don't pick up so much through the orbs. Mostly sensation things, Lu Han says." Jongin scratches his neck, just below the collar. Lu Han's collar, a most unsubtle mark of ownership, drawing a line they all know better than to cross. "Unless one of them gets summoned, we won't know."

Kris silently hopes for a summoning. He'd go up to the bar and get drinks, but that would mean leaving Jongin to face the stares alone, so he doesn't get up until Yixing and Jongdae reappear.

"Sit," Jongdae says. "Give me the orders and I'll go up. I might be able to get us a discount, assuming the bartender remembers me being a cute six year old."

It's slightly disconcerting, the way Jongdae's inserted himself so neatly into the group since morning, but he has the advantage here and they'd be foolish not to benefit from his local knowledge. He's the only one who knows what lies ahead on the road, he's successfully saved Kris from becoming a frog, and it's his van they're using to pursue the professor. He's an integral part of the team, now.

Which is great, only...Kris feels a little cast aside. When he'd started working regularly with Yixing and Jongin, they'd all agreed that he would be the leader. He doesn't feel like he's leading much today.

"Let him have his moment," Yixing murmurs once Jongdae's left for the bar. "We've just walked into his life and stolen him away from everything he knows. We've had months to get used to the idea piece by piece. He got hit with it all at once."

"I know," Kris says. "And I'm grateful he knows the area. Really."

"Then stop looking like he just walked off with your chocobo," Jongin says bluntly. "He seems really nice."

"I'm glad you think so," Yixing says, "because you're sharing a room with him tonight."

It's hard to tell what Jongin thinks about this because he gets up to give Jongdae a hand at the bar, after being waved over to help carry drinks.

"Food will be out in about fifteen minutes," Jongdae says. "The good news is: the bartender remembers me. The bad news is: he remembers me breaking the bottle of two hundred year old whisky he was saving for a special occasion. So no discount."

"We'll live." Kris shrugs philosophically. "Did you get a chance to ask him about Suho?"

Jongdae smiles awkwardly. "That...might be better coming from someone else."

Kris can't help but laugh. Drink in hand, he leaves the others at the table to wait for the food and ascends the curved wooden staircase to the next floor. Upstairs, a bored-looking young woman leans on her elbows on a desk, the register laid out in front of her (and far too close to a candle). The wall lamp doesn't do much to dispel the shadows up here. It's relatively bare, with a door leading to the rooms at the back, further into the mountains, and only a rickety wooden railing keeping weary travellers from falling into the pub below.

It's the only inn in town. The professor must've stayed over, if he and his formerly dead companion had only left that morning. This is as good a chance as any to try to learn something about them.

Smoothing back his hair with his free hand, Kris shoots the girl at the desk what he hopes is a killer smile, and tries to look like the most exciting thing to cross her path all year. He reckons that shouldn't be too hard, in a place like this.

"Hey," he says casually. "It must be pretty lonely up here all by yourself."

The girl rolls her eyes. "Tell you what. How about I go down and have a drink, and you can stay up here and see for yourself how lonely it is?"

Okay, so he's not going to win her over with a line. He's out of practice anyway - can't remember the last time he even tried to make a move on somebody. (Don Corneo so doesn't count.) Moving from town to town and keeping to himself are not terribly conducive to forming relationships, and one-night stands tend to leave him feeling empty and alone afterwards. It's not as if there have been many of those, either. Most people take one look at the sword on his back and keep their distance.

"How about I go down and buy you a drink?" he tries, aiming for more sincere and less slick.

Still no luck. "They only serve my favourite drink at the Gold Saucer," the girl says sweetly. "If you hurry you might make it before the bar closes."

Kris grimaces at the obvious put-down, which at least earns him a laugh. "Do I get points for trying?"

"None, but you get one if I can steal a sip of your beer."

"Better than nothing." Kris approaches the desk, holding out his glass to the girl, whose nametag reads 'Rosa'. (The name gives him horrible flashbacks to the previous night, when he'd agreed to take the part of the Evil Dragon King on the stage in the Gold Saucer's Event Square. He hopes this Rosa isn't going to turn out to be Lu Han.)

Rosa takes the beer, stealing considerably more than just a sip before handing it back. "Thanks. You're staying here tonight, right?" When Kris's mouth falls open in surprise, she scoffs: "C'mon, your friends said there were four of you, and I've never seen you before in my life. We don't get many strangers around here."

"You had some staying last night, though, right?"

"Yeah..." Rosa looks up at Kris curiously, pushing her headband up to keep her soft brown bangs out of her eyes. "How'd you know? Friends of yours?"

How to play this, Kris wonders? There's no chance he can bluff his way into claiming to be friends. He only knows the name of one of the men they're chasing, and nothing at all about the other one, not even what he looks like. At least he has a picture of Suho. He pulls out the professor's ID badge, holding it up for inspection. "Not exactly," he says. "We've been looking for this man for the past few days. To..." To what? Talk him into parting with his Summon materia? "To ask him some questions about materia. He's a scientist."

"He's boring, that's what he is," Rosa says, shooing the badge away with one hand. "Kept asking me if I'd read any good books lately. You see a library built into these mountains?"

Kris smothers a laugh. "What about the guy he was with?"

"Sehun? Well," Rosa's expression turns sly, "that's another story altogether. Is he a scientist too?"

"Probably not," Kris says, "but you know his name, which already means you know more about him than I do." He opts not to mention that Sehun, if that's his real name, had managed to get himself crushed to death and resurrected at Fort Condor.

"He's too cute to be a scientist," Rosa decides. "Not that Suho wasn't, but he had that kind of parental air, you know? Reminded me of my grandfather. A tiny, cheerful bundle of responsibilities. Sehun was a little younger, a lot taller, and much more laidback."

She makes grabby hands for Kris's glass again; he figures if it'll get her to keep talking, she's more than welcome to the whole thing. He sets it down on the desk. Rosa actually favours him with a smile as she picks up the beer.

"So you can take hints after all."

"Only the ones that don't mean I have to leave," Kris says. "Did either of them say anything about where they were going?"

"What's it to you?"

Life or death. Well, perhaps not quite in that order. But if Kris explains why they're really chasing Suho, the girl's going to think he's insane and not tell him anything at all. "I was serious about asking him some questions about materia. We've got a Summon acting really weird, and since he's the expert, we're trying to track him down before anyone gets hurt."

"Oh!" Rosa's eyes widen. "Should you even be in here? Is it safe?"

Kris backpedals frantically. He doesn't want to be responsible for them all having to sleep in the van tonight. "It's only when he's summoned," he assures her. "No one's going to be calling him out while we're in town, don't worry."

Rosa visibly relaxes, arms slumping back down on the desk. "Don't scare me like that. Just for that, I'm finishing your drink." And she does. "I couldn't tell you where they're going anyway - they don't even know themselves. They're just looking for some giant tree or something."

Some giant tree. Of course. But the tree has to be dead by now, if it even existed here to start with, and Kris has his doubts. Suho must be having the same dreams, but what could he have seen to lead him to believe there's any chance of finding the tree here, in this world?

"Do you have any idea where they were going to look for the tree?" Kris asks. They can follow the buggy tracks again in the morning, but if they reach a point where the tracks are no longer visible, they're completely lost.

"They went up to old Bugenhagen's observatory, at the top of town, to have a look through his telescope. Don't know if they found anything but when they came back they were asking about maps. Like a single tree is going to be important enough to be marked on a map!"

"It might be...if it's the right tree," Kris says slowly, not quite believing it himself. But if Suho has a reason for thinking it's here, maybe it's true.

"Not on any maps here," Rosa says. "We only have star charts, thanks to Bugenhagen. But Bughe - he's probably still downstairs having a drink - told them to check out the old library in the next town over. Said if the map's not in Nibelheim, it doesn't exist."

Nibelheim. Kris wonders if Jongdae knows how to get there. Probably.

Yixing calls his name from the bottom of the stairs, saying the food's ready, so he thanks Rosa and reaches for the empty glass to take it back down. Rosa picks it up, but as she hands it over she adds: "When you catch up to Sehun, tell him to come back anytime!"

"The resurrected guy with the giant shuriken's named Sehun," Kris informs the others as he sits down to a plate of fried chicken. "Apparently he's tall, cute and a hit with the ladies."

"Probably because he doesn't tell them he was crushed to death," Jongin says - at least, that's what it sounds like, but he's talking around a drumstick so it's hard to tell.

Jongdae is more polite, waiting until his mouth is empty before saying, "I guess if his face was still all mashed up it wouldn't do much for his social life."

"What social life?" Yixing points out. "All he's done all week is flee one continent and drive halfway across another."

"At least we know something of what they did when they were here." Kris explains what he's learned from Rosa. "And we know where they're headed."

"I can get us to Nibelheim," Jongdae says. "It's the only spot of civilisation between here and Rocket Town."

He doesn't elaborate, delving into his food with relish; Kris suspects he's contemplating what will happen if Suho and Sehun end up leading them all the way back to his hometown. Hopefully, they'll have no reason to.

It's a subdued meal, all of them exhausted after the latest in a series of long days, and keen to stretch out full length on a bed. They speculate a little about the tree, and where it might be if it exists here at all; Jongdae, who's only glimpsed it in a single dream so far, shrugs and shakes his head when the others suggest possible locations. What if the tree's back across the sea somewhere, clinging to life as the dead, red skies steal its moisture drop by drop? What then?

They can't go back. Not yet, not after what happened in Fort Condor and Junon. What if it's spreading westwards, and even now the residents and refugees at Costa del Sol are turning into paper shells of their former selves? Kris wishes he knew for certain.

Maybe there's a way to find out...

"Do you know anything about the observatory here?" he asks Jongdae. "Would I be able to go up and look through the telescope?"

"Anyone can." Jongdae wipes his mouth on a serviette. "Go up to the Tiger Lily Arms Shop, take a left, and head up the stairs. There's a ladder in the materia shop - or there was, last time I was here. That brings you out up top, and you can go inside from there. There should be someone around to let you in."

"Going to stargaze?" Yixing asks.

"If I'm lucky." If Kris is unlucky, the stars will be hidden by a dark red haze, creeping across the sky. "I'll see you guys later."

He leaves the others behind in the pub, neither inviting company nor shunning it, but it makes him feel more comfortable to see them warm and at ease around the table, quiet but tranquil by candlelight. He'll rejoin them later, maybe at the bar, maybe only in their dreams. Perhaps he'll see Sehun fighting alongside them tonight.

He won't see him on the other end of the telescope, that's for sure. He follows Jongdae's directions, first past the arms shop, then the materia shop (both closed). Like the pub, they're hollowed out from the mountains, but both are deserted and shutters have been pulled down over the wares. Lanterns hanging from the walls give him enough light to find the ladder, and ascend safely to the plateau.

The very peak of Cosmo Canyon has several wooden houses, the only ones of their kind in town, and an enormous circular building with a domed roof. The gold-rimmed telescope sticks out against the night sky, showing Kris just which door he needs to knock on. When he does, a solemn, grey-haired man in a pale uniform answers, beckoning him in with a slight smile.

"Uh...hi," Kris says, trying to remember the name Rosa had mentioned. "Are you...Bugenhagen?"

"I'm Hargo," the man says, inclining his head. "Bugenhagen passed away many years ago. Elder Bughe and I maintain this place in his stead. Please come in."

He leads Kris inside. The main room looks like that of any other house, with kitchen and living quarters giving way to another door, probably a bedroom. There's a ladder in here, too, though he can't tell where it goes. The whole town seems to be made up of caverns and ladders.

"I'm really sorry to disturb your dinner," Kris says, spying the plate and mug on the kitchen table, still very much in use. "I could come back in the morning?"

Hargo chuckles gently. "You'll not get much stargazing done then."

"Ah. Right..."

"It's part of my job to assist anyone who comes seeking knowledge," Hargo explains. "That's usually why people come up here."

Kris doesn't admit that he's not exactly sure what he's seeking. Confirmation that the rest of the world still exists, beyond the buggy tracks they've been following all day? Hargo seems a gentle sort; Kris would rather not alarm him with concerns of doom and gloom.

The ladder turns out to lead up to the bedroom - the door, Hargo explains, leads to the planetarium, which is pretty but not what Kris is here for - and another ladder still takes them up to the telescope. They're in the heart of the dome here, surrounded by wheels and valves, pipes and switches. A computer screen over on the left displays a screensaver of dancing chocobos. There's so much gadgetry Kris doesn't even know where to start. He stares at the telescope, which looks even more enormous up close and he can only see the section that's actually inside the building.

"You look like you could use the Idiot's Guide," Hargo says, handing him a laminated sheet of paper with a series of pictures on it. "Have some simple instructions, and call me if you need any help. I'll come see how you're getting on once I've finished my stew."

He disappears back down the ladder, leaving Kris with a set of illustrated directions and an overwhelming array of controls to explore. The drawings are not terribly complicated, mostly involving simple geometric representations of the control panel and lots of pointy arrows. How hard can it be? It's not like he's trying to find something in particular. Right now, he'd just settle for being able to glimpse the world beyond Cosmo Canyon.

After a few false starts and much turning of dials, Kris manages to get the screen to display the view through the telescope, and thinks about where best to point it. Geography's never been his strongest suit. Junon's massive canon would be an excellent landmark, but will he able to find it in the dark?

"You okay up there?" Hargo calls from below.

"Fine, thanks!" Kris calls back. If he gets really stuck, he'll go down and seek help, but he'd rather not admit he's not sure what he's doing until after he's made a decent stab at it. Plus, if he's going to have company up here, he'd rather it was of his own choosing. It's a good thing he's still carrying his sword.

"Baekhyun!"

"You say something?" Hargo calls up.

Kris drops down beside the ladder, ignoring a giggling Baekhyun, who's leaning against the control panel. "Just summoning a friend!" he shouts down. "We'll try not to make too much noise."

"He probably thinks you're insane," Baekhyun says as Kris gets to his feet. "But I'm not surprised; this does look kind of like my idea of a mad scientist's lair."

"We're in an observatory in Cosmo Canyon." Kris waves his hand to make Baekhyun move away from the controls. They probably don't respond well to people sitting on them, especially people who enjoy playing with anything that's not nailed down. Jongin's terrible for fidgeting, but Baekhyun's worse. "Careful. I don't think we can afford for you to break this telescope."

"Oh, is that what it is?" Baekhyun stands back so he can see it properly, tilting his head as far as it will go to follow the long, metallic curves leading outside the dome. "If anything happens, I can just disappear."

Kris glares at him. "But I can't."

"Then you'd better be careful, hadn't you?" Baekhyun edges forward, approaching the screen, which is currently showing a segment of the night sky. "Are we going to stargaze together? How romantic," he coos, clasping his hands under his chin and smirking to prove his thoughts are turning to anything but romance.

"It's not exactly the stars I'm interested in," Kris says. "Do you know where your other orbs are?"

"Some of them?" Baekhyun shrugs. "If I get summoned and I can identify the area, then I know, but if my masters move on..."

"So you don't know where your orb with the professor is, for instance?" Kris says, disappointed.

"Even if I did, you wouldn't find him through that thing. He's probably indoors somewhere, resting for the night. You didn't come up here just to look for two men and a buggy, did you?"

"Of course not," Kris scoffs, brushing a hand casually through his hair. "I came up to see if there's still a world left behind us."

"Before? Because I don't know where that world was, but I don't think you're going to see it anywhere except in your dreams." Baekhyun sighs. "I could do with seeing a little less of it, actually. I'd like to sleep through the night without watching you flying around inside my head with dragon wings."

"I'm not apologising for something I have no control over," Kris says. "And I didn't mean that world. I meant, like, Junon, and Midgar, and all the other places we've been back on the eastern continent. I'm not sure how much we'll see at night, but I guess if the cities don't have any lights..." He stops, suddenly sick to his stomach. Everyone in Junon had either left on the ships, or perished in a storm of red dust. He'd watched it himself. There won't be any lights.

"You won't know if you don't look."

Baekhyun's being flippant, but it's a fair point. Kris studies the instructions again. It looks like there's only so far he can manoeuvre the telescope anyway, so he's not sure he can even scan the land in the direction he wants. It's hard to get the focus right too, and at first he ends up with nothing but dark, blurred blobs on the screen. When he aims higher, the stars that fill his vision reassure him that however far the red cloud may have spread, it's not yet conquered the whole sky.

"I wonder if the stars are the same?" Baekhyun says. "If I can look up at the sky at home and see the same stars you do here?"

"Maybe?" Kris hasn't given the location of Baekhyun's home too much thought, because it's somewhere he knows he can never go. It's better to concentrate on where he has to go next, on places he can reach, and not distract himself with things that can never be. "Maybe your world's out there, turning next to mine, and we see the same stars but from different angles?"

"That would mean we're moving from planet to planet using materia orbs." Baekhyun grins. "Teleportation? That was Jongin's power before. I wouldn't mind picking up other people's powers too."

"Being a judgemental pocket torch isn't enough for you anymore?"

"Just because I'm not freakishly tall-" Baekhyun begins in protest, but Kris tunes him out, alarmed when the stars disappear from the screen in a swirl of red.

They're not gone, just...fading. Kris turns knobs and dials on the panel, seeking a better angle so he can identify the patch he's looking at, but all he gets is red dust motes streaking furiously through the night sky.

"Where's that?" Baekhyun's noticed now too, all his attention now focused on the screen. "Junon?"

"I don't know!"

Kris's hands start to shake, unsteady on the controls, so he tightens his grip to compensate. He takes the telescope lower, sweeping down until he finds something beneath the red storm. It's the sea. He can only tell because the water's choppy, waves rising and falling at random, tranquility stirred to breaking point. Following the waves takes Kris towards land. Land he knows, with beaches and bad breakfasts brought by helpful waitresses. A thriving tourist town, now filled to the brim with Junon's refugees.

"It's Costa del Sol," he says, each word a boulder scraping his throat on the way up. "We were only there yesterday morning..."

The lights of the town, of houses and tourist villas, of shops and restaurants, flicker in and out of view, white and yellow turning to red, then to nothing at all. Other lights, closer to the ground, move in broken lines away from the coast - vehicles, being driven to safety, if anywhere is safe. Kris doesn't know how far they'd have to drive. The threat has crossed the sea: what was a sanctuary yesterday will be tomorrow's graveyard. There's not enough lights, anyway. Not enough for everyone to leave.

Perhaps if he moves it out of focus, the disappearing lights will be less painful. He turns the dial, but Baekhyun's hand - smaller than his, but with long, elegant fingers - closes over his, and when he looks up, his Summon's shaking his head and pointing to a corner of the screen with his other hand.

"Can you turn it to the left a little more?"

"I'll try." Baekhyun releases his hand, so Kris nudges the scope just a trifle, hoping not to overshoot whatever it is that Baekhyun's concerned about. "What do you see?"

"Those lights." Baekhyun taps the screen. "Do they look higher to you? And they're moving, but slowly."

"Hold on; let me see if I can make it clearer."

There's not much illumination to work with but the reflections of light on metal tell a story, and it's one that might, just possibly, have a happy ending.

"Ships," Kris breathes. "They're sailing away."

"Where can they go?"

"North?" Kris suggests. "Or north-west, and sail around to Wutai?"

He doesn't even want to consider trying to find Wutai with the telescope. He's not sure he's ready to see his birthplace reduced to dust while he watches, helpless to protect his mother and the life he left behind. North...well, that would take them to where he first met Baekhyun, when he was lying half-dead in the snow, a victim of his own desire to find himself. All he's seen of the northern continent is iced over and perilous, but perhaps it's a less certain death than staying in the south.

"It'll be okay," Baekhyun says, with evident false confidence. "Probably."

"If they had enough ships," Kris says. "If they started evacuating in time. When the red storm hit Junon, most people had already left because of the monsters - and the monsters were mostly gone by the time we got there."

"If there are any in Costa del Sol now, we're not going to see them."

"We're not going to see much of anything."

But Kris is wrong. Because when the storm finally lifts, and the tinted skies are still once more, the lights are left behind. Oh, not the moving ones - anything with an engine has already gone, either by land or by sea. But in the houses, the shops, the offices...the lights remain, because there's no one left to switch them off.

The lights had been off in Fort Condor, where the attack had come during the day, or so they'd surmised from the remains of the residents. But in Costa del Sol they'll shine until the bulbs burn out, or the power fails completely. Kris makes the mistake of zooming in on a streetlamp. There's more life left in the lamp than in the dried-out husk lying haphazardly beneath it.

"I think I've seen enough," Kris says, turning away from the horrors on the screen. He doesn't need to look at another dessicated corpse to know what's befallen Costa del Sol. The question is: where will it hit next?

"Definitely," Baekhyun agrees. "I should let the others know things are escalating. If the professor actually calls any of us out, we can tell him - ask him to wait for you to catch up, even - but he hasn't so far. We're not even equipped right now."

"What a waste." The Summons would be the perfect way to communicate across the mountains with Suho, wherever he is now, but if he never calls them out, that road's closed to them. "He doesn't have one of Lu Han's orbs, right?"

"I wish he did," Baekhyun says. "We could've avoided all this driving across the desert stuff."

"Good thing for you we didn't," Kris points out, "or your other orb would still be sitting out there, buried in the sand."

"Yeah, that..." Baekhyun licks his lips. "Thanks for the rescue, I guess?"

"Thank Yixing; he's the one who went out to pick you up. Jongdae's got the orb now," Kris feels obliged to add, since Baekhyun's got a clear view of his sword and it's obvious that there's only one materia equipped.

"Two of me's probably more than you could handle anyway."

"One of you's bad enough," Kris says. "If we both called you out at the same time, would you be identical?"

"Depends on my mood. But whichever 'me' it is, it's always the same person - and I'll always know you."

There's something reassuring about that. Kris can summon Baekhyun from any of his orbs, anywhere in the world, and they'll always know each other. That's a given, a constant of the kind Kris has rarely had in his life - of the positive sort, anyway. Meeting Baekhyun had been just the start of it, and now he can count on more people - more friends - than he'd ever thought he'd have. Even if some of those friends live in another world.

"You think we can see into girls' bedrooms with this thing?" Baekhyun asks hopefully, and there, that's another constant, albeit one Kris wouldn't normally bother to encourage.

But despite the cheeky question, Baekhyun's been shaken up too, and they could both do with taking a stab at normality. Kris hands him the instruction sheet. "Knock yourself out."

Baekhyun never does find a girl to spy on, of course, and he's not really looking, only trying to lighten the mood with his own imitable brand of levity. He avoids the towns altogether, pointing the telescope up towards the stars and tracing their patterns on the screen with his fingers. Kris watches his own fingers until the tremors have completely faded and that cold, empty feeling inside begins to be replaced by a sort of fondness. Baekhyun will vanish soon, but even when he does, Kris won't be alone. He never has to be alone again.

Hargo eventually sticks his head up the ladder and doesn't even blink when the first thing he sees is Baekhyun disappearing. "I see you weren't joking about summoning a friend," he says. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

"In a way," Kris says grimly. "But I wish I hadn't."

"That's what one of the young men who came up here last night said when I asked him the same thing." Hargo gives him a sympathetic smile. "Come down and have a cup of tea with me. Kettle's just boiled."

Kris follows him back down to the kitchen and takes a seat on one of the stools next to the table, silent until he's had his first few reviving sips. He has an opportunity here; he might as well make the most of it. "The two visitors who came up here last night - do you know what they saw? The girl at the inn said they were looking for a tree."

"They didn't find a tree," Hargo says. "There wasn't enough light, so they came back in the morning for another look, but still didn't find the one they were searching for. What they did find last night, I couldn't say, but the older one, he didn't look any too happy about it. He was so sad when he came back down, and I didn't have the heart to ask him about it."

It's entirely possible Suho's seen the same sort of thing as Kris. Not Costa del Sol, but perhaps he looked back to check on Junon, and saw the handful of bodies crumbling to dust at the port, or lights burning in the windows of empty buildings, a day after the storm's been and gone. Or perhaps it comes back, and Kris wouldn't know, because he's never waited around to find out.

He does know that he doesn't want to be caught up in it, now that the danger has spread across the sea. They'll move on in the morning and hope for the best.

Hargo tells him more about Cosmo Canyon while they drink their tea. Though friendly, he retains his serious air, and Kris assumes that must be normal for an Elder - whatever it is that Elders do in this town. "It's a very special place," he says. "We do not receive many visitors, but mostly, those who come here do so to study the world around us - and what lies beyond it. That is why we have this observatory."

"Do you know anything about other worlds?" It's worth a try, Kris thinks. Hargo might believe him if he explains why he's asking, but he'd prefer to avoid that when it's not his risk alone to take.

"Nobody knows anything for certain." Hargo takes a sip from his teacup, smiling when he lowers it again. "Because no one has ever been. Although Rocket Town got its name from some bright spark who built himself a rocket and tried to fly up there to see, and he's not the only one who's tried. I hear a young lad went up a few years ago, too, and... Well, let's not dwell on that. If you go into the planetarium you'll see a holographic model of the only other planet we've found, so far, after years of searching the night skies."

Another planet. Kris's heart beats a little faster, thinking back to his conversation with Baekhyun. Perhaps this is it, where the Summons live. He leans forward across the table. "Does anyone live there?"

"Possibly." Hargo flicks the air with his fingers, indicating that Kris should consider sitting down again. "There are land masses, but the planet's too far away for us to tell much more than that. I believe it to be inhabited, though, and I can see by your face that you, too, entertain that idea."

"I think it might be where the Summons live," Kris says. "Is that what you think?"

"It's not so much what I think, as what I've been told. The Elders of Cosmo Canyon have handed down a prophecy for over a thousand years, each one relating it to their successors in the hope that one day, we will have an explanation." Hargo clears his throat. "When the skies and the ground were one of legends, through their twelve forces, nurtured the Tree of Life. An eye of red forces created the evil which covered the heart of Tree of Life and the heart slowly grew dry. To attend to an embrace the heart of Tree of Life, the legends hereby divide the tree in half and hide each side. Hence, time is overturned and space turns askew. The twelve forces divide into two and create two suns that look alike. Into two world that seem alike, the legends travel apart. The legends shall now see the same sky but will stand on different ground. Shall stand on the same ground but shall see different sky. The day the ground beget a single file before one sky in two worlds that seem alike, the legends will greet each other. The day the red forces purify and the twelve forces reunite into one perfect root, a new world shall open up!"

"'Embrace the heart of Tree of Life'?"

"It's a very old prophecy," Hargo says apologetically. "I think a few words were lost over time, and possibly some of the meaning..."

Kris starts to make a joking retort, but stops himself when he realises that the prophecy, though oddly-worded, does seem to hold some relevance. Twelve of them, battling to save a tree from a mysterious red force. Twelve divided into two, living in worlds that seem alike. The last part is particularly muddy, but appears to suggest that if the twelve of them reunite, something spectacular should occur; whether the "new world" is literal or figurative is up for debate but if the world has already split once, it's not so farfetched to imagine it being reborn.

He wonders if Lu Han has any idea about the prophecy, since the drive to find each other seems to have originated with him. They definitely need to talk.

"I believe the two worlds are twinned," Hargo says. "That one day, the six foreordained people from each will come together, and when they do..."

"When they do?" Kris prompts.

Hargo shrugs slightly. "It's hard to say. Even here, we've noticed that the world is failing, being slowly overrun with poison. Through the telescope, and through the tales of visitors, we learn about the redness in the sky that steals the life from the air, and the increase in hostile, monstrous creatures that precedes it. Perhaps the time is approaching for a change."

"The professor who was here last night - Suho? Did you tell him about the prophecy too?"

"The subject did not arise. Should I have done so?"

"I think the tree he's looking for is the Tree of Life," Kris says, feeling awkward that he's sitting here discussing the veracity of an old, barely comprehensible prophecy with a complete stranger. He hardly even discusses it with Yixing and Jongin.

"Which would, in all probability, make him one of its twelve defenders." Hargo doesn't sound in the least surprised, but if he's accepted this as reality all his life... "And you?"

"Me?"

"Were you looking for the tree too?"

"That wasn't what I came up here to find," Kris says, "but I get the feeling that I will, if I keep following Suho."

That's...kind of intimidating, if he thinks of it in the context of the prophecy. The idea of finding the professor, his resurrected companion and the Summon responsible, is one he's become accustomed to over the course of the chase, and if he's not entirely certain what he plans to say to them, at least he doesn't anticipate anything too overwhelming. (As far as intense experiences go, he reckons not much can compete with transforming into a dragon.)

But if the twelve of them are together...what happens then? Will space 'turn askew'? Will everything simply end, or will everything begin? Kris wishes the others were sitting beside him now. This isn't all down to him, but he's the only one here - save Baekhyun, who probably can't hear what's going on, from his orb - and the weight of it sits heavily on his shoulders.

"You will, if it's your destiny to do so," Hargo says. "Don't be afraid. Change doesn't have to be a bad thing."

Change can be a good thing. Kris knows that. But all he'd set out to do was find himself, not save the world. Not build a family piece by piece and lead them into the unknown. Jongin, Yixing, Jongdae, Baekhyun, Lu Han, Minseok, Kyungsoo, Suho, the mystery Summon, Sehun (Kris would bet any money he's one of them) and...Zitao. Hmm. Zitao's with the other Summons in their world, but none of them have one of his orbs. The prophecy is far from clear, but Kris gets the impression they all have to be in the same place at the same time for anything to happen, which means that even if they catch up to Suho first thing in the morning, the world won't be turning itself inside out yet.

Or so he hopes.

Hargo leaves him in peace to finish his tea; Kris is grateful he doesn't push, doesn't pry. Perhaps it's because he knows that there's nothing he can do that will affect the outcome. He's shared what he knows: the rest is up to them.

When Kris returns to the pub, he finds his companions have already retired to their rooms for the night. Rosa has to tell him which one's his. Yixing's in bed when he enters, though not yet asleep, using the lamp on the nightstand to write in his lyrics notebook. It's a cosy, warming room, with cheerful plaid comforters on the twin beds, matching cushions on the small couch, plastic flowers in a vase and a painting of the sun setting over the mountains. Although there are no windows and the whole thing's hollowed out from the landscape, it doesn't feel any more claustrophobic than any other bedroom - and considerably less creepy than last night's residence, in the Gold Saucer's Ghost Square.

Kris would like nothing more than to stretch out and sleep, but this can't wait until they're on the road again. "Do you know if the others are asleep?" he asks when Yixing finally realises he's there.

"We only came up ten minutes ago," Yixing says. "So Jongdae might not be. Jongin was asleep walking up the stairs."

"Then I'm going to have to wake him. You all need to hear this."

It's another ten minutes before everyone's crammed in Kris and Yixing's room - minus Zitao - and every available space is occupied, if not by bodies then by the weapons in which they've equipped their Summon materia. There's only one Baekhyun out; from Jongdae's orb, not Kris's, though it makes no practical difference. Kyungsoo's sitting by himself on the couch, unimpressed as always, eyes daring anyone to join him. Jongin's half-asleep on Yixing's bed, mostly lying in Lu Han's lap, with Minseok and Yixing at either end. Jongdae and Baekhyun have taken over Kris's bed between them, which leaves Kris perched precariously on the couch arm and towering over the rest like a schoolteacher.

"So I just heard about this prophecy..."

Kris watches Lu Han closely as he explains what he's learned from Hargo. While everyone else expresses various flavours of surprise - even Jongin wakes up a little for it - Lu Han merely nods, silently agreeing with Kris's reasoned conclusions regarding the contents of their shared dreams. No two ways about it: he has to know.

But there's no need for Kris to ask the question himself. Jongin does it for him.

"Did you know?" Jongin twists in Lu Han's lap so he's looking up at him. "You've always known more about this than any of us. Is that why?" He still sounds sleepy, but there's hurt there too and Kris really doesn't want to get in the middle if they're going to fight. He had enough of that with his parents.

Lu Han reaches down to stroke Jongin's hair, though the petting does little to dispel his pout. "It's not the first time I've heard it, but it was a long time before I had any idea what it meant."

"Lu Han," Jongin growls; Baekhyun laughs at him and Lu Han only grins.

"I found it tucked away in a book on lepidopterology I'd ordered for the shop. A piece of paper with those words on the front, and twelve symbols on the back. None of it made any sense, and the drawings were...like something Zitao would come up with. Art is not one of his gifts."

"You should see Kris try," Yixing says, and Kris winces. "What kind of symbols?"

"I think they're ours," Lu Han says. "The only one I could really identify to start with was a unicorn - that's you. When you guys have the dreams, do you ever look at your hands?"

"I did," Kris says. "I'm wearing a silver dragon ring."

"I've seen it too. Zitao has an egg-timer on his, and mine is..." Lu Han's face contorts itself into an expression of exaggerated disbelief. "It's a bunch of circles sort of linked together - I guess it's somehow supposed to represent telekinesis. Anyway, I didn't have anything to tie the symbols to back then, and the wording was just so much gibberish. I thought a page from a fantasy book had been left between the butterfly articles by mistake."

"I wonder how mine looks?" Jongdae says. "A lightning ring would be pretty cool."

"I've seen it," Baekhyun says. "It's kind of like a disco-dancing squid."

"Let him have his illusions." Lu Han's hopeless at hiding his amusement. "I'd only met Minseok, then, and I hadn't seen anything to suggest that we were connected to people in your world. It was just the two of us for a while, and even though we kept being summoned across to fight monsters, that didn't seem to have anything to do with the dreams we were having about these twelve shadowy figures trying to save a tree."

"Or with the two of us trying to inject new life into a struggling bookshop," Minseok says, with a glance across at Lu Han, who nods his thanks for the support. "Our day jobs kept us busy enough."

"Did you know too?" Jongin asks him, and Minseok shakes his head.

"I kept it to myself," Lu Han says. "First because I didn't know what it was, and then...I wasn't sure. The first time we saw Yixing in person and worked out that he wasn't being summoned was the first time I had any inkling that some of us were living in your world - that we were twelve, but split across two worlds. It started making more sense then."

Jongin pulls himself up into a sitting position, fully awake now, and the level of tension in the room increases by more notches than Kris cares to think about. "And you didn't tell me?" He bats Lu Han's hand away. "You were going to be honest with me, and you didn't think to mention something this big?"

Kyungsoo rolls his eyes as Lu Han freezes, feebly attempting to justify himself to an angry Jongin. "I said I'd tell you if I wasn't sure about something. But I didn't even know if we'd find everybody, and I thought if I told you all that coming together might bring about the end of the world, it would only complicate things. Or scare you off, maybe. I didn't want to say anything without knowing for certain." Lu Han sighs. "But for the first time in years, there's a new Summon."

"I hope he's a considerate roommate," Baekhyun says. "Wherever he is. It's been nice, having the room to myself since I moved in."

"You could still have said something." Jongin looks down at the bed, biting his lip, and Kris hopes they manage to work it out soon. He's not best pleased, himself, but he's always accepted that Lu Han knows more than he tells, and it's true that in this case, the knowledge would've done them no good. Not yet, when they're still missing four people.

Lu Han's quiet too, watching Jongin with anxious eyes. Jongdae takes up the conversation instead. "I'm going to pretend that everything that's happened to me since yesterday makes sense," he says. "Because if the twelve of us are supposed to get together and somehow save the world, what happens if we're too late?"

That's a sobering thought. Hargo's comment on how the world is failing echoes in Kris's mind. The monsters, and the red skies that follow them. What if they spread all across the world before the twelve of them find each other and there's nowhere left to run? Will they die for good, this time?

"Everything dies," Kyungsoo says flatly. "Maybe just here, maybe both our worlds, I don't know. We don't have the same problems over there."

Baekhyun frowns at him. "You really know how to brighten up a room."

"Let's try to be optimistic," Yixing says. "Who's to say we'll be too late? We're working together on this."

"With three people who know nothing about us and one who does but can't be here with us because we haven't found one of his orbs yet," Kris says. "Anyone know where we can find a Zitao orb?"

"If there was one anywhere near, we'd let you know," Lu Han says. "It's more important to find the professor for now, since we have no way of keeping track of him. Knowing he's looking for the Tree of Life won't tell us where he's going after Nibelheim, if anywhere."

Jongin looks up when Lu Han speaks, but won't look directly at him. "The prophecy said something about dividing the tree in half, right? So maybe there's...half a Tree of Life out there somewhere?" He's hesitant, clearly worried he'll be laughed at for the suggestion, but visibly relaxes when Jongdae smiles at him.

Yixing muses aloud on how half a tree would probably look like one of Kris's drawings; Kris ignores him and tries to figure out what that would mean for them. A tree is either a tree, or it isn't. One with only half a trunk would surely have made a name for itself by now as some sort of marvel, and even if the half is just an ordinary stump, what would that mean for the remainder?

"The legends hereby divide the tree in half and hide each side," Kris says slowly. "Hide where?"

"Half in your world and half in ours, obviously." Kyungsoo doesn't outright say it, but his expression implies that there's a 'do I have to do all the thinking around here?' that should be tacked onto the end.

"I don't think we're finding a tree - half or whole - any time soon, in either world," Minseok says. "We should focus on finding the others. They might have information that we don't about how this is all supposed to work. After all, they must have learned about the tree somehow. Having weird dreams wouldn't be enough to start them looking."

"Don't underestimate weird dreams," Jongdae says. "One day you're living a normal life and the next you're driving across the desert with three strangers because they turned up in your dreams."

"Technically more than three," Kris points out, tapping the materia equipped in his sword. That's right, there's eight of them now - nine, counting the absent Zitao - and they need to stay focused. Everyone has to agree on what they do next. He gets to his feet. "In the morning we go to Nibelheim, and if the professor's moved on already we keep following him as best we can. If anyone disagrees and thinks we should look for the tree or do something else altogether, now's your chance to say it."

Silence. Kris scans the room, attempting to gauge the mood. This isn't going to work if there's conflict within the group, and he's not good at coaxing people into agreement. To his relief there are no open mouths, no raised hands, no signs of disagreement. He lets a full minute go by before saying, "Then we're all agreed. Let's get some sleep; we've got more driving to do tomorrow."

Lu Han's the last Summon to leave. He and Jongin stare uneasily at each other; Kris just wants to shake them and tell them to get over it because they could do without this. "Go talk it out elsewhere," he says, ushering them both towards the door. Jongdae looks relieved when the two of them head for the stairs, not the room he and Jongin are sharing tonight.

Yixing's already prepared for bed, settling himself back under the covers now the other occupants have departed. Kris busies himself in the bathroom for a while, returning to find Yixing mostly asleep and the nightlight still shining. He reaches across from his own bed to switch it off and hopes the mountain air won't do too much of a number on his skin while he sleeps.

Tonight's dream brings him little he doesn't already know. One of the shadowy figures becomes Jongdae, lightning crackling from his fingertips as he calls on his power to protect the tree. Baekhyun's description of his ring is quite accurate, Kris notes. His own is still the same shining silver dragon.

Another shadow becomes Kyungsoo, throwing up giant walls of earth around the tree. Those without faces number only four now. The red clouds swirl, infiltrating every crevice in the bark...and then stop. All motion comes to a halt. Time itself is standing still.

Zitao, Kris thinks as his aborted dream fades into true sleep.

-----

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?