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“That book was actually meant for you,” Chanyeol admits grudgingly once Minseok’s out of earshot. He doesn’t know why he even bothers – Junmyeon had been thrilled with Kyungsoo’s vitamins, had obviously meant for that self-help book of his to go to Sehun. As responsible as Junmyeon tries to be, it’s hard to deny he plays favorites, and Chanyeol’s never been on his nice list.

There’s something about Junmyeon’s expression now though, under the dim Christmas lights of the hotel room rented out for their latest recording. Not quite skepticism, but there is a question there, written all over his face.

“I’ve already read The Little Prince. Multiple times, even.” His voice is soft, tentative.

“I thought…” Chanyeol hesitates, decides to take Junmyeon’s attention as encouragement for once, “a dorm copy would be nice. And that maybe you could discuss it with me sometime. I could use some new material, for my songwriting?”

There’s a small quirk to Junmyeon’s lips. He reaches up to gently ruffle Chanyeol’s hair like he never has before. “I’d like that.”

Chanyeol looks down at Junmyeon the way he always has. But for once, it feels like he’s finally seeing eye to eye with his hyung.

"I always thought all of Grand Master Yoda's people were..." Junmyeon's voice trails off, and not just because they're in the library and need to maintain some degree of quiet and respect. His face scrunches up as he tries to bring to mind whatever word he's looking for, twisting into that weird expression that makes him look a little constipated.

"Bad-ass?" Sehun offers, only to be rejected with a quick shake of the fellow Padawan's head. "Old?" Yet another rejection, though this one kinda startles Sehun -- it's hard to imagine someone like Grand Master Yoda as having once been a youngling. He racks his brain for more suggestions, mentally pulling up the images of both the Grand Master and Master Yaddle. "Uh, green?"

"Diminutive," Junmyeon finally admits in a muted whisper, covering his flushed face in shame, as if either of the two most skilled Jedi in the Order would care about being called such. Though, coming from someone of Junmyeon's stature, it is a little hypocritical.

As far as Sehun knows though, Junmyeon's initial assumption is correct though. He knows for a fact that Grand Master Yoda and Master Yaddle are both barely sixty centimeters tall, and from the holocrons he's checked out of their battles, they had both always been that size. In all of his studies, he hasn't come across anything imply otherwise, or even visual records of any other members of their species. The galaxy is a pretty big place though, and despite being the largest collection of knowledge in the Galactic Republic, the Coruscant Jedi Archives don't actually hold everything.

He narrows his eyes at Junmyeon. "You found out something, didn't you?"

"I got to meet one of the Master and Padawan pairs from the Silikan Stillness," Junmyeon starts, though Sehun interrupts before he can explain any further.

"That bookbarge that was scheduled to come in yesterday?"

Junmyeon makes a flicking motion with his fingers and uses his control over the Force to flick at Sehun's forehead without actually getting his hands dirty. "Don't call it that! It's a Corellian Colonizer!" His expression turns reverent, and not for the first time does Sehun wonder why Junmyeon hadn't instead turned to starfighters rather than archives given his enthusiasm. "But yeah, it's the one that docked yesterday. I went with Master Kyuhyun to help with welcoming the Jedi who've decided to stay with us for the time being, and one of the Padawans I met was... like Grand Master Yoda. Except tall."

Imagining a tall Grand Master Yoda is actually a lot harder than Sehun thought it'd be, and all he can come up with is a green, rubber-limbed creature with those familiar, gigantic ears. It doesn't look right at all. "There's no way," he immediately argues, "whoever you met has got to be another species. I bet they weren't even all shriveled and and wrinkly like Grand Master Yoda."

"Yeolda isn't wrinkly because he's like centuries younger than Grand Master Yoda," Junmyeon tells him, rolling his eyes. "But he's got the ears and the three fingers and the same speech patterns and everything. He's just. Really tall. Unfairly tall."

Junmyeon probably just means tall compared to Grand Master Yoda and Master Yaddle. Like seventy centimeters instead of sixty. For a species that tiny, even that small difference would seem huge. "Whatever," Sehun says, rolling his eyes right back at Junmyeon, just because he knows it irritates the other Padawan, "I'll believe it when I see it."




It takes less than a day for Sehun to see it.

"Sehun, you must be," the tall, green, giant-eared, three-fingered alien greets him with a smile that's wide, friendly, and utterly terrifying, "Yeolda, I am, but call me Chanyeol, friends do." Just like Junmyeon had insisted, Chanyeol is tall even by human standards, and he's not wrinkly at all. His skin looks as smooth as Sehun's own, his hair thick and dark, more like Master Yaddle than Grand Master Yoda. His amber eyes somehow brighter than any of Coruscant's three moons.

"Uh, yeah," Sehun mumbles, only continuing with his greeting when Junmyeon nudges him in the side with one of his bony elbows instead of the Force for once, "welcome to Coruscant, Chanyeol."

It's strange, having to actually look up at someone who wasn't a full-fledged Jedi Knight or Jedi Master. It's partially because most of the older Padawans they'd grown up with had left with their Masters to train themselves throughout the galaxy unlike Junmyeon and Sehun who had Masters and positions and paths of study that kept them stationed at the Order's headquarters instead, and partially because the few Padawans they did still see were fresh out of the Initiate stage, still younglings in the grand scheme of the universe and in their own cultures, yet to reach their destined heights. Even Sehun has a few more centimeters left in him before he stops growing, unlike poor Junmyeon.

"Very cool, Coruscant is," Chanyeol answers happily, looking around wildly even though Sehun can't imagine how different the Jedi Temple could be from one of the praxeum ships they have flying around the galaxy. There would still be Jedi of all ranks running around with holocrons and lightsabers regardless of whether or not they were in the temple or on the Silikan Stillness. Those things were basically entire cities on a single ship from what he's heard, even better maintained than most planets on the Outer Rim. "Looking forward to exploring, I am."

"We could show you around, couldn't we, Sehun? We've grown up here our whole lives."

Sehun blinks, probably for the first time since he's laid eyes on Chanyeol. "Yeah, we have. We could," he agrees, taking in Chanyeol's mega-watt grin. He wonders if this is what being under a mind-trick would feel like, except he's pretty sure no one would dare to do such a thing to fellow Jedi, especially in the sanctity of the temple.

But he's not quite sure how else to explain the foreign pounding in his chest, brought on by the sight of this alien and the way his ears curl and uncurl as he rambles nonstop to Junmyeon about training on a praxeum ship instead of a proper Jedi Temple, of his experiences throughout the galaxy on planets the two of them have only heard of in their lessons.




"You know," Sehun says later that night, when it's just him and Junmyeon again because Chanyeol had to go meet up with his Master to discuss his future training on Coruscant, "Grand Master Yoda's kind of cute."

Junmyeon makes a face. "Sehun, he's a millennium older than us. Please don't tell me this is going where I think it's going."

"What? Oh, gross, no!" Sehun's pretty sure his face matches Junmyeon's right at that moment, and he shoves the other Padawan's shoulder. "I just meant... His species? They're pretty cute guys. The ears are cute."

He feels his skin prickle under Junmyeon's stare, and not even in that nice tingly way the Force is supposed to make him feel. The way meeting Chanyeol had made him feel.

"Sehun," Junmyeon finaly says, clasping a hand on his shoulder with a strange look in his eyes, "be careful, okay? Meditate a little more on the Order's teachings and calm your heart." There's something about the way he says it that leaves Sehun uneasy, and he probably pulls away from Junmyeon a little more roughly than he intended.

"My heart is perfectly fine," he mutters. Lies. He doesn't remember ever lying to his friend before, not over something that wasn't like where the last pastry on his plate had disappeared to. "I was just saying. Don't we have to love and appreciate all beings in the galaxy?"

"Equally, yes," Junmyeon agrees hesitantly, his voice making Sehun's stomach twist into knots, "make sure to remember that part, too."

The garden is quiet when Chanyeol enters it that morning, the wooden gates swinging shut behind him with a lazy wave of his hand. It'd be more disturbing if there had been noises other than the calling of the birds and the buzzing of the insects and the babbling of the brook that fed into his carefully maintained pond. After all, no one was allowed in or out without his permission.

"Minseok hyung," he calls out, looking around for the groundskeeper. Unlike the rest of Chanyeol's attendants who are in charge of taking care of his estate, Minseok works and resides solely in the garden, "it's Chanyeol. I'm bored."

He hears a scoff, but when Chanyeol turns his head to look over, there's a smile on Minseok's face as he makes his way over. "I'm sure you probably have some business back in the main house to settle," he says. There's a hint of disapproval in his voice, a warning that Chanyeol should probably perform his duties properly for once. However, despite their ages, Chanyeol is the master and Minseok is the servant, and all the side-eyeing in the world couldn't change that. Or it shouldn't anyway, because the narrowing of Minseok's sharp eyes makes the guilt in his gut burn a little more than he likes.

"But business is boring. I wanna hang out here instead," Chanyeol whines. Minseok has, unfortunately, long since developed quite a bit of immunity towards his antics though, far better at resisting than most of the people forced to deal with Chanyeol on a daily basis. The look on his face is utterly unimpressed as he stands there, the sole obstacle to the lazy day of Chanyeol's dreams.

Honestly, there's no reason for him to still kick up a fuss about it the way he does every time this happens anyway. The situation's not even really that unusual seeing as Chanyeol spends half of his time lounging in the garden, sunbathing and swimming and sleeping and wasting time in general. Sometimes casting little spells he'd get in trouble for anywhere else because what if something caught on fire, Chanyeol?! or stop levitating the dishware, Chanyeol! No, it doesn't matter that you can fix it!

"C'mon, hyung, please," he continues when Minseok makes no sign of uncrossing his arms and undoing his frown, "just for an hour or two? I need to take care of the fish anyway, I'm sure they miss me."

At the mention of the garden's other inhabitants, Minseok visibly wavers. Chanyeol holds back a sharp-toothed grin and waits.

"Well... I suppose it's about time you spent some time with them," Minseok admits, "Kyungsoo in particular has been getting rather grumpy."

Chanyeol laughs, as loud and obnoxious as he wants. "Kyungsoo's always in a mood with me, but if it's you saying so, then I guess I'll have to do something about it."

Really he'd been thinking of taking out Sehun or Jongin today, but he could easily just do that another day. Tomorrow even. It's been a long time since he's spent time with Kyungsoo anyway, though, he's pretty sure that has more to do with the fish swimming away every time Chanyeol reaches out to stroke his shiny black scales.

"So where is the little guy?" he asks, trailing behind Minseok as they both walk over to the large pond taking up half the space in the garden. He's answered not by his groundskeeper, but by a splash from the water, aimed precisely so that the legs of his pants are speckled with water. "Ah. There he is. That's not nice, Kyungsoo-yah."

A carp smaller than many of the others stares up at him from under the water with large, unblinking eyes. completely unrepentant. It has a certain charm to it, making it hard for Chanyeol to feel even a prickle of irritation.

Chanyeol bends down, hunching over so he's as close to the water as possible. "Hey, ready for some exercise?" Without waiting for an answer, he reaches out so that his hand is hovering over Kyungsoo in the water. After a little bit of finger wiggling and a whole lot of concentration, he and Minseok watch as the fish starts growing in size, his body warping. His fins stretch into long, wide sleeves with delicate fingers peeking out past the hemline, his tail splitting into two clothed legs. His face completely changes shape and color, and by the end of the whole mess, there's a short young man dressed in a glimmering black hanbok standing in the shallow pond water.

"Don't call me little," Kyungsoo grumbles as he makes his way out. By the time he's on dry land, there's not a drop of water on him. "What are you doing here anyway? Don't you have work to do?"

"You and Minseok hyung are way too similar," Chanyeol laughs, standing back up and wrapping an arm around Kyungsoo's narrow shoulders. "By the way, I missed you too."

Kyungsoo elbows him away, turning to look at Minseok with accusing eyes. "You said you wouldn't say anything, hyung."

Minseok holds up both hands in surrender, but he's smiling too. "But you got what you wanted, right?"

There's no need for Chanyeol to wait for an answer, not when he can see Kyungsoo's newly formed ears going red underneath his dark hair. He reaches out for Kyungsoo again, draping himself all over that tiny body, and unsurprisingly, pleasantly, this time Kyungsoo doesn't shove him off.

"I haven't seen a single bender since I've arrived here," Minseok says curiously, looking around Republic City carefully for any sign of an earthbender or a firebender or a fellow waterbender. It's a lot larger than he remembers it being from his last visit here. Everything is bigger. Sleek lines and sharp edges everywhere. "Do they all stick to the other side of town or something?"

Chanyeol seems to hesitate before answering, glancing around in case anyone is listening too closely. "There's, ah. There's not very many of us left, Minseok hyung. The Equalists made sure of that." From beside him, Kyungsoo grimaces, rubbing his upper arm. There's a story there that they haven't gotten to yet.

Equalists though. That's not a word Minseok's heard very often, but it's definitely one he's seen plastered on the city walls they've passed, on large stylized posters impossible to miss.

"But how?" Minseok continues asking. He's been gone from this world so long, there's so much he needs to catch up on. He's still not quite sure how a few days in the spirit world had resulted in almost a hundred human years passing when that had never been the case before, when there had been no indication of any difference in the flow of time between the two worlds.

Somehow, somewhere, something had gone terribly wrong and now he was paying the price.

"There was an uprising," Kyungsoo replies, quiet enough that no one would be able to eavesdrop unless they were either airbenders or trying very, very hard. "They used... It wasn't quite like chi-blocking, because no chi-blocker has ever been able to figure out exactly how to reverse it as far as anyone's heard, but they just took people's bending away."

The bitter tone of his voice is hard for Minseok to ignore. But he waits until they've turned down an isolated alley, towards the shabby apartment his two new friends reside in. They're in the slums, Minseok recognizes. Unlike everything else, very little has changed here, unfortunately.

"Did they get you too, Kyungsoo?" he asks cautiously, reaching out for Kyungsoo's hand.

Kyungsoo yanks it away. "They only managed to seal one of my arms." The same one he's been rubbing, Minseok would guess. "Chanyeol managed to distract them before they could get to the rest of me." His eyes go soft when he mentions the last bit, and Minseok watches as he manages at weak smile at his best friend.

"Good thing it wasn't his legs," Chanyeol adds, patting Kyungsoo roughly on the shoulder with more cheer than he probably feels, "I know they may look short to you, Minseok hyung-" Minseok glances down at his own unimpressive set of legs and raises an eyebrow, but Chanyeol continues on, "but that's where all his strength is you know? All an earthbender really needs is the ground under their feet after all."

"If you don't quit talking, you'll be the one with a useless leg," Kyungsoo mutters even though Chanyeol just laughs, "if I recall, firebenders don't use those nearly as much as their fingers."

Minseok tunes out the rest of their banter, even when Kyungsoo looks dangerously close to carrying through with his threats. There's a lot he needs to do here, he thinks sadly. So much he needs to fix, so much time he needs to make up for.

But then, what else is the Avatar for?

There were only six tokens left on the board. The sack of money, the boot, and the top hat had all been discarded with little surprise, and none of remaining players had really taken notice when their owners had wandered off on their own after they'd gone bankrupt, most of the funds ending up in Sehun's greedy hands. Minseok honestly didn't mind their lack of effort honestly, considering he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to continue playing either. The game had already run far too long for his liking -- he would have to call Changmin hyung later and apologize for standing him up at the gym.

"Kyungsoo hyung, it's your turn," Jongin whined as they all waited for Kyungsoo to finish texting Jo Insung or Lee Kwangsoo or whichever A-list actor had happened to exchange numbers with him after crossing his path. Minseok was honestly surprised he'd even managed to stay in the game as long as he had, given how distracted he was every time he rolled the dice. It'd gotten to the sad point where first Sehun, and then Chanyeol had started moving his wheelbarrow for him.

"Oh. Right," Kyungsoo said, reaching out blindly towards the middle of the board for the red dice without even looking up from his phone. Eventually, Chanyeol had to nudge them in his direction for him before he finally got a hold of them. "Thanks."

Minseok didn't even bother watching as Kyungsoo flicked his wrist and released the dice. He'd hadn't been rolling too well, and it honestly wasn't a huge surprise when he landed on yet another one of Sehun's many properties -- this one acquired from Junmyeon, who hadn't even fought for it -- and then made no move to either shift his token or hand over the rent money.

They all waited at least thirty seconds for Kyungsoo to look up from his phone, and when that didn't happen, Jongdae heaved a long-suffering sigh from across the board.

"Chanyeol, could you..?"

"Yeah. I'll take care of it. Minseok hyung, could you get his money?"

Casting a glance over at Kyungsoo who still seemed oblivious to the world outside of his chatroom, Minseok leaned over and started counting out the exact number of bills need for Kyungsoo to settle his rent while Chanyeol went ahead and moved his wheelbarrow right onto the property where Yixing had finally gone bankrupt before he left the game and where Sehun had just parked his racecar during the last round.

"Don't forget, it's has a hotel," Sehun said, far too smugly considering how horrible he usually was anytime they all sat down to play a game together.

Still, rent was rent. Minseok reached for the hundred dollar bills and watched as Kyungsoo didn't even bat an eye. At least his blatant disregard for the game eased Minseok's guilt as he watched Kyungsoo's supply of money dwindle down to a few twenties and a couple of railroads that he'd probably end up selling during his next turn if no one managed to land on them before then.

Sehun smiled as Minseok handed over the cash. "Thanks, hyung. It's your turn, by the way."

Honestly, either way Minseok was pretty sure he was doomed. At least if one of Kyungsoo's railroads were in the way, he wouldn't have felt so hopeless, but instead, the line of properties in the path of his thimble all belonged to either Jongdae, Jongin, or Sehun. Even Chanyeol's battleship had ended up on Jongin's property during his last trip through this part of the board, but at least there had been only four blue houses there instead of a shiny red hotel.

"Well, Minseok hyung, what are you waiting for?" Chanyeol asked, probably just wanting to get the whole game over and done with. He was at least doing better than Minseok and Kyungsoo, but that wasn't saying much.

Jongdae frowned, leaning over. "You're not going to give up, are you, hyung?" He almost sounded as sincere and concerned as he usually would, but then his lips curled up into a sly smile and Minseok remembered why he was considered one of Baekhyun and Chanyeol's own. "Though if you are, you could will all of your stuff to me, you know."

Before Jongin could start whining about the unfairness of that particular move, Minseok shook his head as he reached out for the dice. "No, just gimme a second. the game's not quite over yet."

Notes: An attempted hattrick to accompany a fan art and a toop based off of the story "Have You Seen My Hat?", changed to "Have You Seen My Baozi?" The song is a cover of G.E.M. Tang's "Where Did U Go", which I was lucky enough to find an instrumental version of. It was surprisingly catchy and I still find myself singing this version of the song when the actual song pops up on my iPod lol. Sung from Chen's POV.