#a h i crammed this in like 4 hours i hope its okay sdkojalsjaf

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SKZ Superhero AU based on @vampire-channie‘s au that you guys should check out!!! it’s amazing and i needed to write this so this is for you bub!! i hope you like it sakdjd also if you wanna rb please rb with the cut~ i dont wanna spam your blogs with a long post <3

No matter how many times they see Woojin shapeshift, it still feels weird and oddly intimate, like they’re watching Woojin bare his soul to everyone. A wolf, silver fur the exact shade of moonlight halts in front of them and curls in on itself, eyes glow a vivid purple, the light emanating until it glares too bright for one moment and then Woojin’s standing in front of them in human form, looking slightly weary and sporting several cuts and bruises. Hyunjin advances towards him, hands already glowing a pulsing shade of pink as he makes Woojin sit down and moves his palms over the wounds.

“They’re already at the edge,” Chan says before Woojin can even start talking. He looks tense, his eyes ringed in light blue as he surveys the patch of dark forest where they’re located.

“Read my mind,” Woojin says, with a little laughter, though his throat sounds extremely dry, “Yes, they’re at the edge of the district. The barriers around us is keeping them out for now since Jisung slammed a fuckton of electricity in there… But I don’t think it’ll keep them out for long.”

“So we fight now,” Changbin says calmly, standing up straighter, “We fight to protect what’s ours, what we love, don’t we?” He surveys the rest of them with a fierce gaze, “We protect our district.”

There’s one moment of silence then - all hell breaks loose.

A loud screech rings through their ears and the earth beneath their feet runs jagged cracks of dark blue as the electricity Jisung deployed before returns to him in a rush, and Jisung glows dark blue for a few moments, battling to control his powers. Around them, the earth starts to shake and dark clouds draw close above them, and Minho does not take well to this. At all. 

“No fucking elementist is controlling our district,” Minho snarls, starting to emit a green glow as he throws his hands up into the sky and pulls them apart, letting the clouds disperse and the rough onyx sky emerges again, too fast, too sudden. Abandoning the sky for a moment, Minho slams his palm down on the earth and at once, the earth stabilises and in several lines, shoots begin to grow out, extending from his palm, and they continue to grow, now moving in erratic lines out of the forest they’re in.

“Leads to our enemies,” Chan forestalls Minho, eyes still shining bright blue, “And only we know what they are… If we’re lost, they’ll lead us back to each other.” He takes a hard look at all of them, the eight people that now mean so much to him, shrouded in darkness, and tries not to think that this could be the last time he sees all of them. “Fight well,” He says quietly, “Stay safe.” 

Changbin is off before Chan even finishes his words, tracing one of the lines blooming with tiger lilies, figure sprinting alongside the rapidly glowing blossoms.

 Felix takes Jeongin’s hand and they melt into the background, Jeongin’s invisibility powerful enough to shroud both himself and Felix. They follow a trail of sunflowers, bright yellow to cover Felix’s yellow trail as he speeds them ahead. The colour seems like hope in the dark, a flicker of something better in the grim today.

“I’ll take the south side,” Seungmin says, then he makes his way alongside blood-red poppies that dot  the floor, like blood scattered in his wake, and a loud crash tells the rest of them Seungmin’s just toppled a tree and caught someone in it. 

They barely have time to breathe before a strand of blue geraniums curl around Jisung protectively and the shoots harden, steel-like as a huge rock drops down on him. The shoots break off, but Jisung is unharmed  - and furious. 

“Come fight me properly, you scumbag,” Jisung hisses, hands crackling with electricity and eyes flashing a light blue akin to the most dangerous summer storms. 

“Get out,” Minho says, edging him away, “I’ll deal with this person. You need to help Chan-hyung.” Another huge rock materialises and drops out of nowhere and Minho barely brings his hands up in time for a tree to block the blow. “Jisung, please, go!”

“I’ll stay with him,” Hyunjin adds, moving in with Minho and taking his back, “Jisung, go!” He swipes his hand at a wall of incoming spears and they fall to the ground harmlessly, faint pink smoke rising from them.

“Hyung,” Jisung says, running beside Chan, following the zig-zag trail of white tulips that are already stained with dirt and what looks like blood, “Hyung, do you know where everyone is?”

“Just about,” Chan replies, sounding like he’s a thousand miles away, and Jisung knows he’s keeping tabs on where everyone is. The line they’re taking splits away, and dark purple orchids sprout thickly, leading deeper into the forest, and Woojin stops, looking at them.

“I’m going here,” Woojin says, and before either of them can stop him, he’s shifted into a wolf, taking the path of the dark orchids, fur changing to blend in with the dark forest, and all they can do is trust that he’ll come back.

“We’re heading for the heart,” Chan says quietly, then switches to telepathy. We take down the heart, and we greatly reduce the power they have, and it’ll be easier for the rest to take them down.

We need to distract the heart, Jisung thinks, narrowly avoiding a stray arrow from the depths of the forest, aim for the weak spot and we can destroy them from within.

I’ll distract, Chan replies immediately, you stay hidden and attack when you spot a chance, okay?

Jisung doesn’t feel comfortable about Chan being bait, but Chan outright refuses for him to be bait, so he goes along with Chan’s plan, albeit somewhat unwillingly. The fear for the rest of his team increases tenfold when he spots Changbin facing up against a team of Ghuis, but Changbin decimates two of them in one blow, gaze burning ember-orange, and turns for his next target, a walking body of destruction.

He’ll be okay, Jisung thinks, holding on to that thought with all his heart, he’ll be okay.

I’m going now, Chan says suddenly, and Jisung has to restrain himself from standing up, trying not to give his position away. From his perch in a tree, he watches as Chan approaches the unmoving group of troops in the middle of their district, their land.

“I’m here to offer you an exchange,” Chan says, loud and clear, his voice ringing through the unnatural silence even as battle roars outside their little circle of terrifying tranquility.

“Speak,” A voice sounds, disembodied and from what Jisung can see, nestled in the centre of a circle of Milesminia. He resists the urge to swear. Milesminia, hyung! He says, somewhat panicked, the dishonoured soldiers! I need Seungmin with me to face them off, I can’t take them all out with my electricity alone.

You can, is the last thing Chan says to him before he feels Chan cut off telepathy with him.

“I offer you me, in return for you leaving my district forever,” Chan says calmly, walking towards the immobile troops, but as he inches closer, the outside flanks point their swords, dripping with fire and blood at him. Chan stops, smiles slowly at the heart of them, head high and proud, “Come, make a deal with the devil, why don’t you? We’re already in hell, you can sink no further.”

Chan stares straight ahead, eyes blown with blue, the colour threatening to take over his whole eye, and he’s pushing himself to find a mind, find a conscious that’s the only living one in the mess of these unliving troops.

The silence stretches long, too long, too long, and Chan is in danger but then -

Go back, he shouts, screams, finding the conscious he’s been searching for, this is not your district, leave us alone! For one moment, the troops all falter, and the Milesminia around the heart falter, revealing an orb projecting a spectre so gruesome, unlike anything Chan has ever seen - faded and patched, a Gyeolguk, something Chan never thought would be real - and everything dies away from one second then before it ends Jisung leaps in.

“Eat shit,” Jisung snarls, flying in from the air and punching straight through the orb, whole body crackling with electricity, eyes ringed with blue so dark the ocean could be in his eyes, and the same screech resounds through the air, hanging for seconds, minutes, decades, a forever and the orb pulses once, twice -

Explodes.

A dark light ripples from the center, obliterating everything inside their small circle of quiet, and everywhere, inside their district, the creatures falter, their source of magic destroyed. Between the rest of the team, the sense that Chan’s telepathy is always there, that they can feel it under their skin, is gone, and it’s terribly unsettling.

Felix stops, his sunshine-yellow trail lighting up the darkness and making him particularly visible in the night, and he squints up at the sky, wondering if it’s become darker. “Jeongin, let’s go,” He says after Jeongin manages to trick one of the Ghouls into slamming into a tree and destroying itself. Taking Jeongin’s hand once again, they speed through the forest, following the sunflowers that are starting to wilt, a mark of Minho’s strength wavering, and Felix’s heartbeat notches up as he catches sight of Hyunjin’s pink glow in the dark fog.

“Hyunjinnie?” Felix asks, and the pink glow falters for a moment.

“Lixie?” Hyunjin asks, “Oh - thank Kore - you guys aren’t too badly hurt… Minho-hyung really spent himself out, used all his elements in one attack and his magic drained everywhere, plus he’s sustaining these lines and trying to protect all the animals by cornering them together -”

“Stop healing me,” Minho says through gritted teeth, even though he looks like he’s in a lot of pain, “We need to find the others, quick. I’m going to lose my shoots if we lie here anymore so -”

“Guys!” A voice bursts out, and just as the last tiger lily dies and rots away, Changbin emerges, eyes still smoking orange faintly, and he looks shaky. “You guys are okay - I - we need to go find the rest and find Chan-hyung and Jisung, please, I was around that area when the blast happened and -”

“What blast,” Woojin demands, emerging from the northern forests, a mess of orchid petals stuck in his hair, “I made sure all the animals are fine, Minho, you can let go of them. What blast? I heard the screaming, but a blast?”

“Everyone!” Seungmin cries, bursting in, sounding distressed, “Please - come, quick - it’s Chan-hyung and Jisung - I managed to lift it off them but -” He cuts himself off, rambling now, and they get up, Hyunjin and Woojin helping Minho to stand as the elementist was on the verge of passing out.

They follow Seungmin through the forest, the last of the red poppies dotting the way to the rest of them. There’s an air of finality as they make their way through the forest and into the open of the centre, bathed in moonlight, and they see what Seungmin had meant.

Chan’s body, strewn in the middle, no visible wound but unmoving, and beside him, Jisung, cold and motionless, a sword bleeding gold lying to his left.

“I found the sword about to stab - stab him,” Seungmin says, breaking the horrified silence first, “When I was following the poppies. And - And I forced the sword off him, but it took so long, like it was sentient, and then the sword fell to the ground and started - leaking gold.”

Hyunjin’s already taken steps towards them, sliding towards them and his knees are grazed but he doesn’t care - his hands are glowing pink over Chan’s chest and shaking with a kind of deadly desperation, doesn’t really know what he’s healing, just hopes that Chan will wake up, and his mind is a steady stream of please please please Chan-hyung come back, please, we need you, please -

What?

The first wisps of consciousness comes back to Chan, and the familiar feeling of his telepathy washes under their skin, and everyone releases half a breath. Chan stirs slightly, opening his eyes, tinged with blue, and he stares straight up at Hyunjin.

“Hyun… Jin? I - oh - we were fighting, and I told the Gyeolguk to fuck off and - and Jisung!” Chan says, sitting up so fast he nearly knocks into Hyunjin, “Jisung punched the Gyeolguk’s energy source, he might be infected, I -”

“Don’t worry,” Minho says, panting slightly and on the brink of exhaustion, “I saw his hand start to bleed gold as well so I earthed him and he’s okay, he’s not infected. I think - Hyunjin just needs to see him.” He sways alarmingly and his knees buckle, though he waves away help and says he’s just tired, withdrawing all his shoots back.

“Jisung,” Hyunjin murmurs, now pressing his glowing hands into Jisung’s chest, exhaustion prickling at his skin and making his head swoon, “Jisung, come back, please.” He hardly knows what he’s doing, just knows he needs to expel the gold out of Jisung, make him come back to them, make him wake up, make him realise he’s protected their district and it won’t be their district without him.

It’s slow. Slow like how the night has elapsed and the sun is rising with slow determination. The light breaks over them slowly, gradually, and as it does, Jisung starts to stir, eyelids fluttering and and waking up. Hyunjin pushes on, pink light glowing even more ferociously as he works to clean Jisung, because though Minho earthed him and the gold won’t come in anymore, there’s still traces left in him that could mean Jisung never wakes up again.

But Jisung does. He opens his eyes as the first rays of proper sunshine dawns over them, casting a fiery red glow over the darkness and chasing the remains of the battle away, his eyes dazzling with the force of a thousand stars.

“What - What happened?”

They have a thousand days and more to tell him what happened. For now, they’re safe, and so is their district. Sadness and pain can wait for another day.