Take Me to the Sky | BTS+

Sope World

A steady base of electro-space beats reverberated from a single speaker propped up against a wall of the small workshop. The room was cramped, lined on three sides with rickety shelves stacked up to the ceiling and cluttered with mechanisms, machines, tools, and metallic creations.

An industrial mess; everything in it's place.

The room was dimly lit. Sparks whirred and fluttered as a small saw in Min Yoongi's hand spun and zinged and dug it's teeth into the solid metal of a human-sized hunk of machinery that stood propped up and held into place by a heavy claw that hung down from the ceiling. He wore black skinny pants, a sleeveless black tank top, and a black face mask wrapped around his mouth and looped behind each ear.

His skin glistened with grease and sweat as the sparks whirred. A single industrial lantern sat propped on a table next to where he stood and worked away at sawing down pieces of metal, lumpy slice by lumpy slice, in the dim yellow light and deep shadow of the small workshop.

The base beat thump-thumped loud enough that he could still feel it in his bones as he worked, even as the saw screamed.

Yoongi's jagged black hair flicked and dripped with sweat along the sides of his face, in his eyes, as he worked.

Last piece, and...done.

The saw in Min Yoongi's hands whirred slower, then zinged to a stop. He leaned over and set the saw down on his workstation table with a heavy THUMP and then pulled the mask around his mouth down to his chin with that same hand that was slicked with black grease.

He held up to his eyes the last piece of metal he'd sliced away from the twisting, winding hunk of scrap that stood tall in his shop. His small dark eyes narrowed in concentration. Yoongi wiped at a string of sweat on his face with the back of his hand, leaving a grease mark trail along the edge of his milky white forehead.

"This'll do."

There was a sudden extra pounding sound, other than the base. Someone was banging hard on the door to Yoongi's shop.

"Aish...." He walked over to the small square stereo on the floor and ticked the knob: off.

No extra reverb around him felt strange inside of his workshop. He opened the door, and bright light streamed inside around the silhouette of a short, angry looking boy.

"What?"

"Hoseok-hyung wants you."

"They hell he send you for? I told you to work on reprograming those laser blasters."

The small boy answered, his words polite but his tone biting, "I was, Suga-nim, and I was almost done."

"I just set you at it an hour ago. And you're telling me they're almost done."

"Yes," the boy's same polite-yet-biting tone continued.

"But you didn't forget to reroute the--"

"I didn't forget."

"What about the copper spring in the--"

"Replaced it with the Xu-Steel springs."

Min Yoongi folded his arms and his mouth turned down slightly, in a mildly impressed frown. The young man standing before Yoongi noticed the hint of approval. Instead of continuing to stare defiantly at his superior's face, the boy's eyes found a dirty cloth on the floor to examine, suddenly a little bit embarrassed.

"Woozi, this. This is why I hired you."

"You didn't hire me, Suga-nim. You aren't paying me anything."

Min Yoongi dropped a hand heavily on the boy's shoulder, part reassurance and part masculine tension. "Don't push it, kid. Get back to work."

Woozi gave a slight bow towards Yoongi, though his eyes flickered with adolescent annoyance.

Just as his protege was about to turn the corner of their ship, Yoongi growled after him, "And keep up the good work!"

Yoongi saw a smile flicker on Woozi's face before he dissappeared around the corner.

"Crazy kid," Yoongi mumbled. He plucked up a grease rag from the floor and started to wipe his hands as he walked himself down the hallway and towards the cockpit bay.

Once he stepped into the cockpit bay, his eyes had to readjust all over again to the searing brightness of all the natural light pouring in through the wall of thick glass that led out to a landscape of sky and cloud. The ship was in motion.

The cockpit bay was curved around the glass wall, with six monitors alone on the top deck, and ten more in the lower quadrant beneath a set of handrails. In the center of the room, five different seats were arranged with sets of controls near each. Jung Hoseok was currently sitting in the seat that was in the very center of the room, elevated slightly over the other four around it.

Hoseok was sitting in that chair with his legs propped over one side, with a bowl of crisps on his stomach that he was noisily throwing into his mouth and munching away at. He held a paper notebook in his free hand and he was staring into it intently.

"You rang, princess."

Hoseok looked up at the sound of Yoongi's voice and away from his dark scribbles, and his expression became instantly brighter. "Yoongiiiii!"

"How many times I gotta tell yah to stop saying my name like that? It's obnoxious."

"Yoongiiiiiii."

"Why the fuck do I even bother?" the technician growled lazily as he walked over to one of the other four central chairs and let his greasy, sweat form fall back into it with a heavy sigh. His body, his eyes, felt so tired.

"Yoongi."

Yoongi's eyes were closed now, his hands folded into his lap. "What."

"Guess who's planning an attack!" Hoseok grinned with boyish, devilish enthusiasm over the top of his notebook in Yoongi's direction.

"I don't need to guess," Yoongi grumbled, opening one eye just a smidgen then closing it again. He couldn't help but give a small smile at Hoseok's positive energy. Just a small one.

"We knew it was coming, obviously, but we have an exact date now! So I've been making lists." Hoseok flipped his notebook vaguely towards Yoongi, though the greasy young man couldn't decipher any of it from where he sat.

Hoseok went on, "I wanted to get your opinion before I start passing out instructions to people: hostage crisis, orrrr Royal Flush?"

Yoongi barked a single laugh. "You mean take them captive, or send them flying into space?"

"No, we can't do THAT. I mean, should we fake it until they're aboard and then take them hostage, or should we just give them our best defense and keep some of them stuck out in the cold? Like a shields and stun guns version of a 'keep out' sign?"

"I think you need to relearn the definition 'keep out.' I was in the zone."

Hoseok waved a hand dissmisively. "This is important."

"So is my project."

"Anyway. What do you think?"

Yoongi shrugged. "I prefer keeping the shields up and no entry. It's less effort."

"But...."

Yoongi let loose a devilish smirk, his eyes still closed and greasy hands still calmly folded in his lap. "But a hostage crisis is what this calls for. And it's the kinda thing that'd drive Joonie over the edge. And that's exactly what we want."

"So, hostage crisis."

"Yeah, but can you call it something else? That's so dramatic."

"Like what?"

"Mmmm...just call it a farce. That's all any of this is, anyway."

Hoseok's face fell into an expression that said, I don't have time for your bullshit today, Min Yoongi.

"What? I'm just saying."

"Hostage crisis it is."