Jimin sighs.

It's soft. And gentle. Like wind whispering through the trees.

"I'm sorry."

Those are the only words he says.

"To your friends? Hah! You should be." The Commander puts a hand on his shoulder. Something about Jimin softens, which raises suspicion in me. "I'd be angry if I were them too. But good job, anyway, for trying to follow my orders."

"No," Jimin shakes his head.

The Commander pauses. "No?"

"No."

"To what?"

Jimin shakes his head again, and I can see a slight smile tugging on the corner of his lips. "You misunderstood me," he says. "I'm not sorry to my friends. I'm sorry to you."

"For what?" The Commander looks thrown off.

"I purposely didn't follow your orders. I wanted to be here, and I let Hobi come for protection."

"The duck? What could he even- OOF!" The soldier gets elbowed in the ribs by the Commander, who's evidently annoyed.

The Commander growls. "You did it on purpose?"

"I won't give up the girl," Jimin says simply. He gestures at me. "She means more to me than you'll ever understand. She's family."

I struggle to wrap my mind around this. So is Jimin actually on our side, or is he working for them, or is he doing double-agent stuff, or what?

What's his true intention?

The Commander chuckles, but he seems to be nervous too. "Oh come off this ridiculous camaraderie nonsense -"

"No. She's my best friend and she's in my team. Also, she's got a sense of humor that you'll never have," Jimin smiles. "So of course she comes first. I'm sorry."

The Commander's breaths get deeper, and his fists ball up. It's understandable - Commanders live nearly their entire lives being respected, so a deliberate act of disrespect ticks them off. A lot.

Jimin doesn't stop there. He continues talking, and his voice becomes a soft hum above the tension that's building up.

"You know what kind of life I want to have? I want to be understood in my darkest moments. I want to be comforted on a bad day... I want to hang out with friends and live my life without consequences hanging over my head. And I know for sure that it's not the life you'd want me to choose. So for all of that, and my disobedience, I'm sorry."

The air around us feels charged. It's similar to what I felt when the soldier was preparing to attack me.

Then in a moment of horror, I realize what's happening: the Commander is preparing for a fatal attack.

Jimin could get killed if he continues.

"Jimin!" I exclaim. "Jimin stop, you could get killed -"

But he puts a hand up, stopping me.

"No Y/n."

"Yes... listen to the girl, Jimin," the Commander curls his lips. "Even she's smarter than you here."

The air around him feels so charged now, we can practically feel sparks flying. But Jimin just smiles serenely. "Unlike me, you'll probably never know what it's like to be loved for your personality, not out of fear or because of your status. You'll never understand what it's like to have friends, to be alive. To be truly human."

The genuine emotion on Jimin's face, along with the light in his eyes and so much more, all come together to form an unmistakably beautiful message.

His speech is powerful. Jungkook and J-Hope are in awe, the night seems even more quiet than before... even the soldier looks stunned. Meanwhile the Commander's eyes stay on Jimin with a gaze that I can't decipher.

It's a standoff.

But the moment of silence doesn't last long, because the Commander grins in amusement. "I would've been impressed..." he murmurs.

What?

ZINGGG!

There's no time to think - at that moment, a red beam shoots right out of the Commander's hands, aimed at Jimin.

And Jimin responds by... bending it?!

The beam, aimed directly at Jimin's torso, becomes bent so it shoots off into the sky instead, exploding into a burst of fireworks when it gets high enough.

The Commander's beam was red - that means fire.

The Commander's element is fire.

And Jimin just bent fire.

Holy guacamole-

"Y/n!"

Jungkook's voice snaps me out of my thoughts. I look over in his direction to see more soldiers - the Fighters - emerging from the shadows. They must've been in hiding and surrounding us the entire time, just like the soldier told us they were.

"Get the girl!" The Commander yells. "No one else is important."

How do we do this? How? Think, Y/n, think-

"Stick with me," Jungkook says. "Back to back, like how they do it in the movies."

I don't question him. We do just that, and I find some comfort from Jungkook's presence behind me. The soldier from before lets out a pent-up yell in that moment, and we all turn just in time to see him hurl a giant ball of earth - like the ones fired at us in the getaway fight - right at me and Jungkook.

BOOM!

But it doesn't hit us.

The giant ball explodes into pieces instead.

It takes us another second to realize who did it. Jimin swings his arms elegantly and makes the pieces fly back toward the soldier.

Earth too?!

I yelp when I suddenly feel multiple pairs of hands grip my arms. I turn around in a feeble attempt to fight back, but it's too late; in my moment of distraction, the other soldiers had sneaked up on us. They keep a steady hold. I want to use my wind powers, but it's impossible without my arms free to do the required movements.

The soldiers pull me away.

I feel Jungkook's back separate from mine. I twist myself around to reach for him, but the soldiers block us off.

"No!"

Whatever else is happening escapes my mind. All I can think about is to somehow get help. Cry, bite, stomp, send a signal - anything. I zero in on all the sounds around me to figure out something, maybe an alarm of sorts...

An alarm! That's it!

Then I see an image in my mind's eye - my memories of training with Namjoon and Jungkook. Associated with the image is a very specific sound, which slips through my fingers before I even know what I'm doing.

"ONE ETERNITY LATER ~"

The voice from Spongebob blasts across the whole parking lot.

All the fighting stops momentarily - the Commander looks over in amusement, Jungkook looks over at me with relief in his eyes, and the soldiers pause in their fight.

The alarm doesn't accomplish much else.

But it's enough.

In the abrupt silence that had fallen upon all of us, we can hear the distant crescendo of a song coming from the right. My heart beats in anticipation.

"They call me artist,
They call me idol ~"

"Get the girl, quick!" The Commander yells. "Before it's too late!"

The soldiers tighten their hold on me. This time they're more forceful but I keep struggling as much as I can to delay their process.

VROOOOOOOOM.

The headlights of a red truck enter the scene. Its brightness is almost blinding but I'm still able to glimpse a small figure hopping out of the vehicle. With a simple hand rotation, the figure makes a cloud of ice shards zip through the air.

Despite myself, I smile.

They're here.

The confusion becomes a chaotic mess. The soldiers are torn between saving their Commander or following his orders to capture me. While they scramble to split themselves into two groups, Jungkook fights his way over and pulls me close to him so we're united again.

"Hop on you guys!"

We whirl around to see the familiar red truck. Taehyung keeps the Fighters at bay with a tornado of tiny dirt particles while Namjoon pulls us into the cargo bed.

"I'm proud of it (proud of it),
No more irony (irony) ~"

Taehyung's defense doesn't last long however, because the soldiers are earth elementalists too. They stand together and the dirt particles start forming into a giant earth ball.

"DRIVE!" Taehyung yells. "THEY'RE ABOUT TO FIRE!"

The truck engine revs loudly and we accelerate so fast I almost hit my head on the wall. Namjoon simply changes his stance to a more stable one, recovering first. Then his hands move into a formation (looking suspiciously like what Spiderman does) and he shoots interlacing beams of electricity at the soldiers standing in our way.

"They're getting toast!" I hear Jin whoop from the front.

"I know what I am,
I know what I want ~"

The parking lot has turned into an arena. Suga's ice mist takes down multiple soldiers at once. Namjoon continues fighting with his electric beams. J-Hope is up front telling Jin where to drive, since he's able to see better in the dark with his light powers. There's yelling everywhere of victories, and defeats, and of pain...

Jimin is still facing off the Commander with his effortlessly graceful moves. I notice the Commander fighting back with carefully calculated ones.

This makes me pause.

While everything else is chaotic, their fight seems... strangely peaceful.

It feels like the sets that Namjoon made me do against Jungkook for practice battles. It feels like pre-planned choreography. Unnatural. And no one else notices because they're too occupied with their own battles.

I watch the Commander sidestep one of Jimin's attacks with ease.

"Guys! HELP!!"

Namjoon's voice snaps me out of my thoughts. 

Up ahead is a line of soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder, which instantly reminds me of the getaway fight when I escaped from school. The earth rumbles loudly, just like last time. And a thick wall of stone rises from the ground, blocking our path. Just like last time.

The scenario is too familiar. The Fighters had figured out that most of us were riding on the truck and, true to the past, we're surrounded again.

"Think of something," Namjoon urges us. "I'm almost out of energy."

I look down at my hands to find the golden threads. They aren't strong enough yet, but now I know exactly what to do. Calm and confidence replace the shaky feeling that I felt last time.

Now with more experience, I prepare myself for the move.

Here we go... 

~

A/N: I wanted to cover the fight in one chapter but it got so long I had to make it multiple parts. Thanks for reading! We'll see what happens next week :)

Also, happy October! 💜