exomeme | part seventy six

part seventy six

EXO COMEBACK EUREUREONG

e-x-o

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wc 1164. sorry to interrupt hpmeme.

hg mod, this is both an anime and a manga!! but i'm mostly basing this off the manga. warning for lu han, sehun, and kris dying (which should be no surprise kekeke).

Lu Han is the first to hear EXO's voice. He takes his seat in the center easily, pushing his sleeves up his arms, like he was actually planning for physical exertion. "Setting a high standard that all of you will have to live up to," he jokes. It's prophetic, though they won't know how prophetic, until he topples off EXO's metal armored shoulder, swan-diving head first into the murky sea. It's so silent when Lu Han's body hits the water, head first. Kris even thinks he can hear the sound of Lu Han's neck breaking. 500 meters is a long way up.

"I didn't push him," Zitao screams, hysterical. "I just tapped him on the chest, he fell over, I didn't push him."

Kris keeps looking over EXO's shoulder, trying to make out Lu Han's body, but it's too dark, and the water swallows it up, ink black and peaceful. When Kris looks back over, he catches sight of Yixing, face still half-frozen in a smile of congratulations, still reach with one hand to touch Lu Han's arm, like he can't fathom the absence Lu Han's body leaves behind.

"Take us back," Kris tells Dung Beetle. "Now, please."

Dung Beetle does, teleporting them back onto the ground, the giant hulking mass of EXO disappearing from feet up when they're safely back on shore. The teleportation feels like his body being hooked through his nose, like being squeezed into a too small space and stumbling into wide openness.

Kris wonders if death feels the same.

Then, he decides it's a closer approximation of grief.

-

Sehun is the next, in their first inter-city battle. When the enemy appears, Sehun freaks out and forgets all their carefully crafted plans to let the civilians evacuate first. The enemy trips EXO, then drags EXO by the feet in a messy radius around it. Kris doesn't realize until it's too late that they've been dragged out to the edge of Sehun's father's office building. Sehun digs EXO's heels into the ground, tries to right it, but fails. The building topples over, a house of steel and metal and glass cards. From their height, it's too hard to see anything, much less individual faces as they try to escape. But, "dad," Sehun croaks, hurtling forward to press himself against EXO's alien displays. It responds to him, zooming in further and further on the rubble. If this were a manhua, Kris thinks, they'd see Sehun's dad's watch hand sticking out from a pile of crushed rock. But it's not, so they don't. Just smothered automobile frames, the occasional shoe.

"You're running out of time, kid," Dung Beetle sneers.

Sehun screams through the battle, high-pitched and painful to listen to. When it's over, he pitches forward in his chair, and curls up, fetal, on the ground. The silence rings in the air, melodic.

After a while, Sehun's breathing stops.

-

Sehun's funeral is quiet, mostly family and the remaining ten pilots. It's held for both his father and him; unconventional, but with alien invasions and big robot battles suddenly becoming reality, sometimes conventions just take a back seat. Kris spends most of the ceremony thinking about how strong the Oh family resemblance is. Sehun's older brother stands flanked by his younger brother's photo to his right, his father's to his left. It is like looking at the same face split into three.

When they finally lay Sehun in the ground, Kris hears EXO's voice. Not now, he prays as the other participants mouth prayers for Sehun's soul. I'm not ready. EXO doesn't respond, just sits in Kris' head, a scent that Kris can't trace, or the sound of very low music far away. He feels for the shape of EXO in his head, and it's almost like he can feel the giant robot nesting somewhere else, its long metal limbs waiting for him to take control.

He and Zitao walk home afterwards. Zitao's face is a complicated quilt of relief, that he's not Lu Han's murderer, and fear, for all of their fates. He restlessly rips leaves off the trees as he walks, shredding them and dribbling the pieces behind him. "I was reading this manhua just before break started," he tells Kris. "About a giant robot, actually, and all the kids who pilot it to save the earth. I just finished it last night."

"And what happened?" Kris asks.

Zitao snags a branch, cracks it, pulling off a line of green, supple bark. When he waves it ahead of him, it makes a whistling sound, sharp and sweet. "They all die, in the end," Zitao says, curiously dispassionate. "But they win."

He whips his branch against a wall. It hisses, splinters open in Zitao's hand. He leaves the pieces on the ground.

-

Kris' enemy is a cylinder that rolls its way towards the city, crushing everything in its path. It decimates a few highrises before Kris manages to pick it up. EXO's hands are spindly and look like they'd break under the weight. They don't. He carries it for a few meters before it starts to spin violently. "Each rotation is shaving off a centimeter of your armor," Dung Beetle remarks, his voice bored and uninterested, like the Chinese commentators during the Asia Cup games that Lu Han made Kris watch. The thought races through Kris' body, from his shoulders down to his fingers, one long ache. "You should hurry," Dung Beetle finishes.

"It's heavy," Kris murmurs.

"Better hold it tight," Dung Beetle chides him, unsympathetic.

Step by step, Kris takes it out to sea. The enemy grinds down the end of EXO's raised arm, then a little more, then the padding against the shoulder, the forehead, the neck. Kris wills EXO to wade out into the water, knee-deep. If he dropped the cylinder now, affixed some highbeams to EXO's head, he'd look for Lu Han's body, which they never recovered after the first battle. He sees, now, EXO's feet plodding over Lu Han's corpse, mashing it into the sand, the decomposing smile on Lu Han's face disintegrating into the water. But the weight of the world rests on his shoulders, churning, a low mechanical growl not unlike the sound of EXO's voice in Kris' head. Maybe that too had been prophetic.

"Dung Beetle," he calls out. "What happens to my body when I die?"

"I can teleport it anywhere you want," Dung Beetle chirps. "Special requests?"

Kris nods. It's time. His arms tremble, as if they were holding the weight themselves. "Drop me in the water," he says. "Let me disappear."

"Got it, duizhang," Dung Beetle jokes. "But only if you win this round, of course."

"Don't worry," Kris tells him with a smile. "I wouldn't waste my life like that."

He drops the cylinder. It lands heavy, but upright. When it starts to spin again, he puts out his arm, to pierce through. Splintering, he reaches for the core. His eyelids feel heavy, and he lets them fall.

omg anon yessss

anon ;;;;

♥

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part seventy six

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Re: HG: bokurano au (team doppar)

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