*This Chapter Contains Violence. A heads up for the overly squeamish (Like me)

~Tao~

Saying Jongdae's name was like a parlay, people don't follow rules, their emotions are impossible to predict, but Tao had heard from Chanyeol that The Boss didn't like his name because it reminded him of his mother. The mother he'd gone against to run this gang, the mother that had passed away because of his starting the gang. The mention of his name could either piss him off, or he'd pause.

Jongdae paused. He had the gun against Tao's forehead, but he wasn't pulling the trigger, he was just frozen, the only thing moving being his hands, which were shaking, his finger drifting on and off the trigger.

"How dare you...How dare you?!" The Boss started, almost panicky in tone, but he did nothing, and it was unnerving how long he stood there, between decision.

Tao didn't break eye contact with those eyes looking at him through a skull mask, his dark eyes were only filled with rage.

All of a sudden, the gun pulled away from Tao's forehead, and Jongdae's arm hit the wall, forced there by a knife, the weapon bouncing up and down from the force it was thrown, pinning Jongdae's sleeve to the wall.

"What the hell?!" Jongdae pulled at the knife with his free hand, letting out a string of curses when he couldn't get it to budge.

Tao followed the line of trajectory the knife must have come from, "You?"

"Duh!" Xiumin said, twirling another knife around skillfully in his hand and rolling his eyes. "Look what you let happen to my sexy Min-hee! You stupid Panda!" Xiumin walked over and pushed Jongdae aside. "Give me Min-hee."

Tao took a deep breath, "What the hell makes you think I'll do that, you psychotic bastard?"

Jongdae gave up on trying to pull his sleeve out from under the knife, and tried to reach for the gun with his other hand. Xiumin picked it up in an action that almost looked like slight of hand, handing it to Tao. Tao took it, not so much because he planned on using it, he'd never used a gun before, his aim must be crap anyway.

Xiumin raised his eyebrows, then slowly ran his tongue over his lips. "Do you have a choice? No, not really. I told you, I could treat her better then you ever could. You can't even carry her! Gimme, Gimme, Gimme!"

Xiumin knelt down and started to take Min-hee's unconscious body from him. Tao pushed him away. "I didn't ask for you to come running."

"Eew! I don't care about you!" Xiumin grimaced. "I came for Min-hee..." He said, stroking her cheek, a smirk coming to his face as he did so. "Only Min-hee... You let her bleed, you said you'd be there, and you lied, you left her alone when you knew a gang was coming, you're an idiot!"

Xiumin gripped the knife tight, obviously thinking over using the weapon. The sharp point of it glinting. Tao couldn't necessarily argue with him, as annoying as he was, once again, he had a fair point.

"Yet another traitor, seems you come in groups..." Jongdae said, ice in his voice as he gave up pulling the knife out, instead reaching in his inside jacket pocket and taking out of phone. "It's too bad, all they need is an order, and you'll be flooded with more then you can handle. Like a worthless bag of kittens cast to the river." Jongdae sighed, tapping a button on the side of his phone, then putting it back in his jacket pocket. "I kind of want to see you drown. I want to see you kick and scream and struggle." He pulled the skull mask off. "Hard to see through that stupid thing... And I'd like you to see how very happy it makes me to see you die after all this, Huang. I asked you to kill one little boy, it didn't have to be all this fuss."

Jongdae didn't look anything like how Tao expected. His face wasn't nearly as childish and innocent as Lu Han's, his features a little more angled, but he looked young, attractive. But then there was his smile, the smile looked like it belonged on the Joker, on the Cheshire cat. His smiled was wicked, every perfect tooth that showed spoke of something sinister going on in his mind.

This was the man he'd worked for for all those years, since he was sixteen he'd worked for him and never once saw his face. He couldn't be all that much older then him, really.

Xiumin rolled his eyes at Jongdae, then stood up and lifted Min-hee's unconscious body without Tao's permission, holding her like a bride, "Ugh, you better get up, Tao, I'm not carrying you, I can just tell Lulu you didn't listen to me."

Xiumin obviously wasn't aiming to help Tao at all, focusing more on his stalking victim. He didn't want her to touch Min-hee, but he could barely hold himself up. Damn, he'd have to let Xiumin help--if he could even call it helping.

"You're going to run right into the storm, right into the hurricane. It's a shame I don't believe in caskets." Jongdae said, leaning his head against the wall.

Tao got up, nodding at Xiumin, but looking down at the gun he'd been handed. He'd lied to Chanyeol before, he didn't know sh*t about guns. "If you know a way out of this mess..."

"Ew. Don't get all desperate with me." Was what Xiumin said before puffing out his cheeks and turning to leave.

Tao took a step forward that hurt, then continued, following Xiumin. He'd stopped just outside the doorway, out of the way of it, holding a finger to lips. In the quiet, Tao could hear feet coming up the stairs. It sounded like rolling thunder.

"Wow, we're going to die..." Xiumin whispered, smiling. "That's too many to handle at once, I count twenty."

Tao frowned. Xiumin was crazy, he hoped he didn't actually mean that. Maybe somehow he'd miscounted or something.

Xiumin shrugged. "A good a day as any to die, right? By the way, you're holding your own, I'm not helping you, you're just not cute enough, sorry--not sorry." Xiumin grinned.

What the heck was wrong with this guy? He supposed he could understand, if he was carrying Min-hee, he couldn't do much else anyway. Tao nodded, looking over the gun in his hands.

Then Xiumin went out in the hallway, and Tao followed, as ready as he'd every be. The hallway was empty still, but it wouldn't be long at all before it wasn't. Xiumin ran over to the end of the hallway opposite of the stairs, there was a window there, wide open, someone had cut a bit of the pane out and opened it from the outside. Must have been how Xiumin got in.

"That's your escape plan?" Tao asked.

"Don't get sassy." Xiumin said with a groan. "Originally, no, but thanks to you throwing Min-hee's phone, I didn't know she was hurt. and I didn't know you'd be this useless either, so I blame you if we have to jump out this damn window."

"There they are!" One of the thugs said, having just come up the stairs.

Both Tao and Xiumin had turned to look. Xiumin swore under his breath. Then reached and grabbed a knife off his personage, throwing it quickly with enough accuracy, that even though he had to hold it funny while holding Min-hee, he still hit the thug square in the knee.

The way the gang member screamed was horrible, Tao couldn't even imagine the pain he must be going through. It didn't faze Xiumin at all. Of course it didn't, Xiumin's specialty was kidnapping, this was a standard occurrence in that field

"Well, cuties first." Xiumin said, going back to the window and putting a leg out of it, there was probably a ledge out there, Tao didn't know the structure of the house very well, and he was hardly ever up on the second floor, let alone out the window.

At the current moment, they were on the second floor, and it didn't help that the main floor's ceiling was high, the drop must have been far enough to die with one wrong step, and Xiumin spent a second making sure of his footing before putting both of his feet out the window.

Tao held up the gun. It wasn't much of a threat in his hands, he wasn't a damn expert marksman like Xiumin, and he was kind of glad for that, he couldn't imagine how it would be if he was anything like Xiumin.

He heard Xiumin adjust his footing a few times as he looked out toward the stairway, the way things were, the others that were probably tentative to come up the stairs, having heard the first one screaming. The first one was still writhing on the floor, trying to work up the nerve to even pull the knife out. It wasn't pleasant to watch, it was akin to watching an animal die slowly, and though this same gang member might have punched him or kicked him, or what have you, it didn't make it any easier to watch.

Tao was going to aim for the leg if he could. This was all so stupid. This was what he got himself into. Min-hee had already tried to talk him out of it, he'd already gotten her involved more then ever, this was what he got.

Then they came. At least five at a time, all with some kind of weaponry, be it tire iron, a baton, a knife, anything. If it could cause damage, it was being brought up and in hand.

Tao took a breath, then aimed for the one coming up quickest, shooting and missing, hitting a different gang member entirely. That one collapsed, and everyone just stepped over him.

Sh*t, this wasn't going to work.

Xiumin mumbled to himself somewhere behind him, probably something about that terrible shot, then there was a loud clang, "OW! Son of a b*tch!" he exclaimed, obviously having done something either extremely stupid, or hurt himself somehow. With him carrying Min-hee, he'd prefer neither of those.

Tao backed toward the window, keeping his eyes fixed on anyone who was coming, as one was already trying to brain him with a tire iron. He took the momentum from it and turned him around, throwing him toward another one of the gang members.

He took a quick glance over his shoulder out the window. He couldn't see Xiumin, but he could most certainly still hear him and all the swears he was letting fly.

The problem with this escape route was that with them coming at him like they were, no matter how many he threw this way or that way, or hit in the face, it would be hard to find an opportune time to go out the window and have time for steady footing.

After punching one of them in the face, he took another shot at aiming the gun, this time, toward their feet, taking three shots across the hallway to stop them from getting any further, or at least to think about stopping, which seemed to work, most of them taking an instinctive step back to avoid getting shot in the foot.

Tao put a foot outside the window, searching blindly for the ledge as he took more shots toward their feet, some of them ignored that and kept going, a few others, seeing he was trying to escape, threw whatever it was they were holding, yelling all sorts of profanities.

Having found some footing, Tao just kept shooting until the gun clicked instead of shot, throwing his other leg over the window sill and out toward this ledge he'd only felt and not seen.

Finding his footing as quickly as possible, he sidestepped as fast as he could without killing himself out of the way of the window so they couldn't throw anything at him. The gun he was holding being empty, he threw it to hold on to whatever he could on the outside wall.

If he looked down he could see Xiumin climbing down from the top of a car, the car being a little to the side of the window. He wondered if Xiumin had actually fell on top of that somehow. If he did, it couldn't have been that far of a fall, because he didn't look too hurt.

He'd have to get over there. Tao groaned. He wasn't one for scaling buildings. Wushu and tightrope walking were two different things.

He sidestepped further over there, almost seeing how Xiumin had managed to get down to the car that seemed miles down from up here, but not quite understanding how he did it while carrying Min-hee.

Seeing that some gang members were already sticking their heads out the window and yelling either to each other or whoever, but Tao heard a clear. "Get down there and cut them off!" So that meant he was limited on time.

Before he could talk himself out of it, even if it was going to hurt and was pretty stupid considering, he eased himself down on the ledge, somehow managing to turn and get his hands to it, lowering himself down as far as he could before just letting go and landing on Xiumin's car.

"Jesus! You're going to scratch the paint! The paint!" Xiumin said, having just laid Min-hee across the backseat.

Tao groaned, that fall wasn't nice, and the first thing he had to hear was a psychopath going on about how he'd scratch the paint? Tao wanted to choke him. But just slowly got up and glared. He felt like he broke something, but obviously he hadn't. But that didn't mean he wasn't sore. And he'd probably have a terrible set of bruises.

"Get your ass off my car, right now! You stupid Panda, don't you have any idea what this costs?"

Tao rolled his eyes, but got off anyway, "You did the exact same thing."

Xiumin looked like he wanted to punch Tao, but kept it to himself, "Rude. I don't get why Min-hee likes you." He walked around to the drivers side grumbling to himself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A/N: I had to re-read the last chapter and a few others before that~ I tried to cover some bases I know needed to be covered, so you know~ Please tell me of any typos or spelling mistakes xD

*GASP* It's almost done! Can you believe it? I CAN'T. just ONE more chapter and a EPILOGUE. That's all there is, oh my gosh O_O Scary, right? I'm not good at finishing things. Not that I write stupid endings, I just don't like the thought of an END because I like writing the story xD

Thanks for stickin' with it, yeah? After this is done, I have a plethora of ideas (YUP, I said PLETHORA #Swaeg), Supernatural ones mostly O.O

\(O.O)/

~Neri~