Archive of Our Own

The shockwave hits N City High School just before lunchtime.

Most of the student body doesn’t even know when it hits. They don’t hear, feel, or see anything differently before, during, and after the shockwave. Most of the students simply continue along with their days, blissfully unaware of the seven different bursts of events that happen all at the same time around the school buildings. An easy life to live.

But Mark definitely knows when it hits. He knows because he shifts into a cat right in the middle of a student council meeting.

There isn’t a heads up, no hope to prevent the consequences that would follow, no time to even process such a sudden change of Mark’s shape. No loud siren, no booming echo through the school, just Mark being a normal human being one moment, and then a cat the next.

Mark drops onto the table, paws landing on the wooden surface. It takes a long, winded moment for him to realize what just happened. It isn’t until he stops talking (well, meowing now) and looks around, realizing that everyone is practically gawking at him—some are backing away in their rolling chairs, and some are pointing at Mark, who simply gets up from where he’d been sitting on the table, tail swishing around as he meows in sheer horror. The silence is horrifically loud. Shit.

No one in the student body is supposed to know about Mark’s shapeshifting powers, much less the student council. When the student council’s treasurer, Yeji, shrieks loudly, he knows it’s time to get the fuck out of there and figure out exactly why the hell he involuntarily shifted in the middle of class. Because this definitely isn’t supposed to happen.

Mark leaps off the table and lands smoothly on the floor, skittering across the slippery, newly waxed wooden floor and making a run for the partially opened door. He ignores the screams of confusion coming from three different people on the student board, slipping through the door and running through the hall, getting as far away as he can from the student council office as he tries to figure out which hall leads into the parking lot. It’s kind of hard to navigate the school when your vision only reaches about a foot above the ground. Everything looks far too big from his point of view right now.

He doesn’t get very far when he hears the sound of footsteps quickly gaining on him. He does his best to run faster with his little legs, but the school hallways feel much, much bigger and wider when you’re a small Bengal trying to escape even just the second floor of the school building. The footsteps gain on him, and hears the panicked yell of “Sorry guys, my cat must have snuck inside my backpack!” echoing down the hallway before he’s scooped up by a strong pair of hands. The only pair of hands he expected to chase after him, much to his relief.

“Mark Lee, what the hell?” The student council’s secretary, Jeno Lee, looks down at him as he dashes down the hallway, leaping down the stairs and bursting through the doors at record speed. Mark remains tucked under his arm, gaining a better view of the school as it flies past him, sunlight flooding into his yellow-grey filled vision. If he had run any faster down the hallways, Mark would think he could compete with the school’s track club.

He tries to say “Listen, this wasn’t exactly a voluntary shift!” but it just comes out as a bunch of frantic meows as he tries to hide himself in Jeno’s arms. He attempts to shift back into his human form, but ends up unsuccessful. Jeno eventually makes it to his car, unplugging his car from the school-provided electric charging station and fishing his keys out. He gently tosses Mark in the passenger seat, and he lands on the soft leather with a quiet meow.

“Why haven’t you shifted back yet?! Mark?” Jeno hops into the driver’s seat and immediately switches on the car, letting himself fall back with a loud sigh and running his hands through his hair. Mark looks at him and tries to shift again, but is, once again, unsuccessful. He tries to think really hard about his human form. Fluffy black hair. Glasses with thick frames. White button-up and lavender sweater vest. His head begins to tingle as he closes his eyes…

He’s thrown back onto the seat, head knocking against the headrest of the seat, sweater vest and all. With a huff, he sighs from relief as he massages his glorious human limbs and stretches them out before looking over at Jeno, who still has his head in his hands.

“Dude, if you’re stressed, how do you think I feel?! My powers have never gone haywire like that. Like… uh.” Mark scratches his head, looking at Jeno with wide, confused eyes. “I really don’t think that’s supposed to happen. Definitely not for me.” Mark has always prided himself in keeping steady control over his powers, keeping them well hidden and only brought out when absolutely necessary. He supposes he can throw that pride out the window now…

Jeno sighs, beginning to massage his temples. “I think Yeji almost fainted in the stuco office… I’m pretty sure the new historian Minjeong jumped five feet in the air. For some reason, Felix didn’t look that surprised—”

Jeno suddenly stops talking, which makes Mark snap his head over to the driver’s seat again. He’s looking at his hands, which are beginning to crackle with electricity, voltage dancing on his fingertips. He looks at Mark with wide eyes and yells louder than Mark has ever heard him yell in his life.

“Get out. Get out now!”

That’s all it takes for Mark’s instincts to kick in, and he opens the door and runs as far away as he can before he hears the sound of electricity crashing and sparking. He covers his head and closes his eyes, even though the sound is quite distant, then immediately turns around to assess the damage.

When Mark opens his eyes, he sees smoke emerging from the hood of the car. Never a good sign in his book. Never a good sign in anyone’s book. He runs back over to Jeno’s car and tries to avoid touching any metal components of it as he scans over the interior of Jeno’s car, which likely won’t be driving anywhere for a long while.

“That… wasn’t supposed to happen either,” Jeno says, staring in shock at the now-fried steering wheel, then at his hands, which appear relatively unharmed. Mark can see that Jeno’s jet black hair is sticking out in every direction possible, which doesn’t seem like a very fun DIY hairdo. Jeno pulls down the front seat mirror and shrieks.

“Looks like—“ Mark barely manages to speak two words before the distant sound of the school’s ear-splitting fire alarm echoes through the parking lot, and they both immediately turn to the entrance they had come out of just fifteen minutes ago.

Mark and Jeno watch as grumbling students burst out of the entrance, complaining about a fire drill and beginning to sit on the edge of the curb as they wait it out. They all quickly realize that the alarm isn’t a drill, though, when they look up to see smoke billowing out from one of the buildings. Right on cue, the doors burst open once again to reveal a few screaming students who run outside and practically throw themselves onto the curb, crouching to catch their breath.

“One of the classrooms just caught on fire! Literally it just…burst into flames! No one was in it from what I’ve heard, but damn…” The student suddenly lowers his voice after he seats himself on the side of the curb next to Jeno’s car. Jeno and Mark turn to each other and nod in sync, simultaneously opening the car doors and hopping out.

“Do you think the fire…” Jeno begins, staring at the cloud of smoke rising from the building in the distance, “Do you think it was… y’know.”

“Caused by someone like us?” Mark finishes Jeno’s thought, having caught onto his best friend’s mindset immediately. “It‘s always a possibility, but… You know I haven’t met any other people with powers in my time at school besides you, Jen.” He looks at Jeno with hesitant eyes.

Jeno looks determined when he looks back at Mark, eyebrows furrowed as he gazes contemplatively back at the school, where a cloud of smoke is beginning to form. "That doesn't mean there isn't anyone out there that's just like us, though. If I had to take a gamble, I’d say there’s more of us, we’re just all good at hiding our powers.”

“Well, look at us now. I turned into a cat in the middle of a student council meeting, you just fried your car, and a theoretical someone just set our school on fire. How’s hiding our powers going for us?” Mark throws his hands in the air and turns to look over at the entrance into the school, where a few stragglers are filing out and making their way over to the mass of people crowded by the curb across the street. “Considering all this chaos, we can only assume this is being caused by the same thing…” One well-dressed boy emerges out of the chaos holding his wrist, looking around the area with a wary gaze, as if paranoid had settled deep within his mind.

Jeno turns and looks where Mark is currently staring, then inhales so sharply that he almost chokes on air. He clears his throat, then (not) subtly shuffles behind Mark and peeks over at the boy from behind his shoulder.

Mark blinks, stares at the boy, then looks back at Jeno. “Am I missing something here?”

“That’s him,” Jeno whisper-shouts, “That’s Donghyuck Lee from my pre-calc class.”

”That’s your crush, Jen?” Mark comments with a laugh, turning to pat Jeno on the back. “He hasn’t even looked in this direction, why are you hiding?”

“Well, what if he does look over here?! I already embarrassed myself in front of him once!” Jeno exasperatedly pulls himself away from Mark’s grasp and buries his face in his hands in typical dramatic Jeno-style. Mark simply continues to laugh and pat Jeno on the back, but he stops when he hears the sound of yelling coming from approximately where Donghyuck had been standing.

When Jeno and Mark turn to look at the commotion, they’re greeted with the sight of Yeji slapping another well-dressed boy in the face. The boy recoils, caressing his face and saying something quiet and inaudible to Yeji.

“There isn’t any sort of fucking excuse for being such a fake friend to Ryujin, Aeri, and Gowon! Do you have any idea how much that hurt all of them?!” She responds loud and clear, loud enough for anyone in the general vicinity to hear. “You know what? Fuck you, Renjun. We’re done!”

With a huff and a flip of her ponytail, she turns the other heel and leaves Renjun hanging, hand still held up to his reddening cheek. Jeno and Mark look at Renjun, then look at each other in complete silence, jaws dropped to the floor.

“Did I just witness Renjun Huang get broken up with? Dude, that was gold! Finally, the king falls from his throne—” This time, Jeno is interrupted when Mark slaps a hand over his mouth, shushing him as they both look over at Donghyuck Lee, who is now approaching Renjun with crossed arms.

“Wow, there’s another ex-girlfriend to add to the list! So much for being the king of N City High.” Donghyuck’s voice is dripping with poisonous venom, malice clearly laced in his tone as he leans closer to the other, who takes a step away from him and glares. Mark vaguely remembers a large fight that had broken out between these two at the beginning of his sophomore year, but it had probably blended together with all the other chaos that had happened at the start of the year.

“Oh, fuck off, Lee.” Renjun bites back with just as much ferocity, voice shaken from the sequence of events that had just transpired. “How’s the new acting gig working out for you? Having fun not getting into Love Song Theater’s production of Bye Bye Birdie?

“I’m gonna fucking choke you out, Huang, just watch me—” Donghyuck lunges for Renjun and nearly manages to wrap an arm around him in a chokehold, but Renjun manages to wrench his arm away from his throat. He grabs Donghyuck’s wrist and puts all of his strength into preventing his fist from reaching his face, the two leaning forward and back, forward and back again in a useless exchange of power.

“Why don’t you just sit like a good boy, huh?” Renjun asks sweetly, ducking one of Donghyuck’s swings as he holds his hands protectively in front of him. He seems to be waiting for something to happen as he backs away, peeking from behind his hands as if expecting for a bird to swoop in out of nowhere and attack Donghyuck’s face.

“Was that intended to piss me off more? Because it sure is fucking working!” Donghyuck practically throws himself at Renjun, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt before he can back away any further.

“Hands off the fucking goods, Donghyuck, we’re both gonna get in fucking trouble!”

“Absolutely not. There’s a whole fucking lot that we need to talk about, actually, and I communicate much better with my fists!”

It’s then that Mark decides that he probably needs to intervene before an actual fight between Renjun and Donghyuck breaks out, jogging over in their direction and inserting himself between the two. He’s broken up more fights in his student council career than he can count—breaking up a small cat fight is basically nothing to him.

“Both of you cut it out before a teacher sees, yeah? I won’t write you guys up if you two calm the heck down.” Mark gives the both of them a pointed look through his glasses, one hand placed on their chests in order to keep them a distance away from each other.

“Probably? Okay, mister goody-two-shoes. Maybe I’ll—” Donghyuck is interrupted mid-sentence by a person crashing into his back, nearly making him stumble and fall on his face, but he picks himself up before he can fall. “Hey man, watch it!”

The perpetrator, who looks absolutely mortified to have crashed into him, looks at him with wide eyes, but quickly relaxes into a grin that seems much too casual for having just run out of a building on fire. “You’re Donghyuck Lee from the theatre department, right? Do you know anything about the mess in the prop closet? Some idiot who had fallen asleep backstage went to check if the alarm was caused by a stage fire and found the props all over the floor and in ruins. He told me to ask you about it.”

Now it’s Donghyuck’s turn to look mortified, scratching the back of his head as he frowns, looking away from the mysterious boy. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why are you asking me?”

“Because you were the last person they’d seen backstage before they fell asleep? I dunno, man. It’s a mess inside.” The boy looks behind himself, up at the rising smoke. “I should get out of here before the fire trucks arrive…”

“God, I know Jeongin needed more sleep, but not like this…” Donghyuck shakes his head and sighs, then narrows his eyes at the boy. “Why are you so worried about fire trucks? They’ll probably take forever like they usually do.”

The boy takes a breath in, and Mark takes the time to relax his grip on both Donghyuck’s and Renjun’s shirt before he speaks. “Long story! I kinda just need to get out of here as soon as possible.”

“Literally why are you being so suspicious?” Donghyuck asks, stepping forward in the boy’s direction. “Do you have something to do with the fire? Are you an aspiring arsonist or something?”

“Well, not exactly. Chenle Zhong, by the way! You might not know me. But I guess you do now.” Chenle smiles and holds a hand out, which Donghyuck takes and shakes with apprehension. Renjun, who has been watching the conversation unfold, rolls his eyes and crosses his arms.

“Not to interrupt, but why are we still here?” Renjun pauses for a moment, then waves his hand, as if disregarding everyone in front of him. “Forget it, I’m getting out of here. I don’t care about you people anyway.”

“Hasn’t Yeji literally been your ride to school for the entire year?” Jeno asks, hiding his smile behind his hand as he moves to hide behind Mark.

The proceeding look on Renjun’s face makes Donghyuck and Jeno both break out into laughter at the same time—Jeno quickly realizes this, and shrinks behind Mark even further, as if embarrassed by his outburst.

Renjun disgracefully marches his way up to Mark and places a surprisingly gentle, but accusing hand on his chest. “Oi, President Lee. Give me a ride back to my house.” The look in his eyes is the same from before, when he was asking Donghyuck to sit down. It’s peculiar, and the order definitely has some sort of unexplained authority to it.

Mark almost listens to him, but instead he crosses his arms and smiles down at him. It always feels nice to bring Renjun Huang’s ego down a notch. “And why should I do that?”

It’s enjoyable to see the stutter in Renjun’s expression, as if the cool, bitchy facade he’d been keeping up for far too long had finally broken after years. Renjun is the type to make the worst mess, start the worst drama, then leave everyone else in the dust. Mark has seen the best and worst of his peers fall to Renjun Huang—it was always uncannily strange how he so easily kept people neatly wrapped around his finger while toppling everyone over like chess pieces.

No more, Mark thinks to himself. He brushes off Renjun’s indignant sniffle and finally voices the wandering thought buzzing around in his head.

“As I was going to say… Since it’s so close to the end of the day, the teachers are likely just going to let us go home. No complaints from your president here.” Mark sighs, leaning against Jeno’s car and trying to scope out his own car from where he’s standing. Just in case he needs to make a quick escape.

Suddenly, Chenle takes a step in Mark’s direction and raises his hand. “I actually also need a ride, Mister President. My parents usually send me a chauffeur, but I think they’re busy, so…”

“A what now?” Donghyuck asks while Renjun scoffs.

“I bet I can just call my own ride somewhere. I have a chauffeur too.” Renjun pulls out his phone and begins to dramatically tap on the screen, holding the screen up to his ear while looking up to the sky and tapping his foot.

Donghyuck rolls his eyes and gestures at Renjun, as if to say “Get a load of this guy.” Renjun notices this and flips him off with his free hand. Chenle grins, entertained by each exchange between the two. Mark can’t really say he’s wrong for enjoying it.

“Well, if you guys are all set on rides, then Jen and I will be on our way,” Mark comments before turning to Chenle. “Uhh… Chenle, right? Do you still think you’ll need a ride? All you gotta do is pay for gas and I’ll drive you home.”

Chenle purses his lips—and that’s when Mark feels an odd feeling crawl up his spine.

The temperature suddenly rises as if someone had turned Planet Earth’s thermostat up, and all of a sudden, Mark sees a set of flickering flames blooming from Chenle’s hands—but it disappears almost as fast as it had appeared.

The flames had barely been ignited for even a moment, but in that single moment, the slam of a phone dropping to asphalt and the whine of creaking metal begin nearly simultaneously as Renjun staggers back from the group that had begun to gather, clutching his head in his hands and groaning in pain.

“Shit,” Chenle mumbles under his breath, eyes wide as his head swivels between the four other people of the group, whose eyes are just as wide. It’s then that Mark realizes something is definitely up, and he needs to get this group out of here now.

“Fuck. Okay, Chenle, Donghyuck, Jen, you guys need to come with me now,” Mark springs into action almost immediately, pointing at his car parked across the parking lot. “I’m the black Acura TLX parked next to that Ford Escape over there. Jeno can show you guys the way. Renjun, you’re coming with us too.” Clearly you’re one of us, Mark abstains from saying.

“No way am I going with you after seeing that—” Renjun winces, clearly in pain. “Did you see what that Chenle Zhong guy just did? Clearly he’s the cause of the fire!”

“I’m sorry, but you all shouldn’t have seen that.” Chenle’s expression is dead serious, looking down at his hands. “It’s usually not like this, it’s—”

“Supposed to always be under control?” Mark offers.

“Not supposed to go haywire like that?” Jeno provides.

“… Only ever happened today?” Donghyuck hesitantly asks.

The five all exchange sudden looks of understanding, eyes wide as they solemnly realize they’ve all been thrown into the same situation. Even Renjun, who seemed agitated before, now stares at the rest of the group, blinking slowly, almost languid at the thought everyone seemed to be sharing in the moment.

“We’re all in the same boat, clearly. Which means that we need to go.” Mark gives Jeno, Donghyuck, Renjun, and Chenle a pointed look. “Now.”

This time, no one hesitates to break into a run across the parking lot to Mark’s car.

🖤

The car ride is, unsurprisingly, filled to the brim with awkward silence. Mark can sense the tenseness piercing the air like a needle to a balloon, so solid he can almost touch it with his fingers. Jeno finds solace in fiddling with his fingers in the passenger’s seat, and in the back Chenle impatiently taps his fingers against the armrest below the window. Donghyuck’s body is squashed flat against the left side of Mark’s car while Renjun sits in the middle, hands placed in his lap as he tries his best to not make any physical contact with the other two in the back seats.

Mark almost sighs in relief when he pulls into the driveway of his house, exhaling very softly when he shifts the car into park and falls back against the seat. Thankfully, nothing powers-related had happened the entire ride home, and now, Mark could peacefully think about what the hell just happened in the safety of his driveway.

“Just to be clear,” Donghyuck pipes up from the back, relaxing his intense leaning towards the left side of the car, “We all… are like that, right? I wasn’t misinterpreting the situation here?”

“Like… what?” Renjun turns to him, confused.

Donghyuck shrugs, waving his hands as if the vague charades would get his point across. “Y’know… Like that.” He flicks his wrists around, then waves them haphazardly in the air. One of his wrists cracks at some point, like he hadn’t stretched them out before waving them around.

“I’m straight, if that’s what you’re wondering?” Chenle comments helpfully. Jeno holds back a giggle in the front seat, looking down and biting his lip to keep quiet, not wanting to ruin the interrogative moment. Mark sighs and shakes his head.

“Powers! Do. We all. Have powers.” Donghyuck rubs his temples with his hand, breathing in for five seconds and out for another five. “Clearly Zhong here has them. What about you guys?”

“We wouldn’t have gotten dragged all the way here by Mister President here if we didn’t, Donghyuck.” Renjun relents, crossing his arms and looking past Chenle out the window. “You all felt it too. That… wave. It made my powers completely malfunction.”

“So Renjun Huang has superpowers just like me. Man, if you’d told freshman Donghyuck this, he would have slapped you in the face for 1. Mentioning Renjun, and 2. Being Renjun.” Donghyuck laughs and slowly begins to clap while Renjun exasperatedly sighs. “What even are your powers?”

“Can we discuss this when we’re not in the car? I’m really scared another one of those shockwaves is gonna happen and I’m going to fry everyone in this car,” Jeno calls out from the passenger seat, pushing his glasses up as he stares ahead at himself in the rearview mirror, peering at the three in the back before opening the car door and stepping out.

The rest of the car passengers follow suit, slowly getting out of the car and gathering at the top of Mark’s driveway. They stand in a deformed semi-circle, giving each other wary looks. Mark feels the primal instinct to do something, but he knows he needs to approach the topic of superpowers in a gentle way, lest he trigger any sort of extreme emotional response from any of them. And no, Mark is definitely not thinking from personal experience there, not at all.

“So,” Mark clears his throat, “Clearly, we’ve all been affected by… whatever the hell that shockwave thing was. Thanks for the term, Jen.” Jeno beams from his spot before Mark continues to speak. “Which means that we all possess some kind of… power. A superpower that went haywire when that invisible shockwave hit us.”

“For example, the shockwave’s effects hit me late. After the shockwave hit me and Mark, I was fine for a few minutes. But when I got in my car, I lost control of my powers… And I completely fried all of my car’s internal parts.” Jeno sighs and runs a hand through his hair, pushing his glasses up his nose.

“When you say fried, do you mean…”

Jeno nods, lifting his fingers, which crackle with electricity and send little sparks flying about. “I mean fried fried.”

“Whoa,” Donghyuck mumbles breathlessly, turning to look at Jeno’s hands with wide eyes. Mark is unsure on whether he’s admiring the sparks or Jeno’s god-shaped hands.

“I felt my flames flare up when I was alone in one of the classrooms. That must have been when the first shockwave hit. But why did that next shockwave only affect some of us?” Chenle furrows his eyebrows, staring contemplatively into space as he thinks out loud.

“We’re not going to get anywhere if we try to figure out the mechanics of this!” Renjun exasperatedly throws his hands in the air, adjusting the collar of his shirt and flipping his hair out of his face. The long locks simply fall back to where they had been before, which seems to further agitate him. “I just want to go home.”

“No one’s going to go home until we figure out what the hell happened at school,” Jeno says, shrugging. “There isn’t really any other option. You know how it is for people like us, don’t you?”

“Apparently not, if you’re trying to prevent me from going home! Unlike you guys, my powers just haven’t been fucking working since that stupid shockwave.” Renjun crosses his arms, looking away from the group and across the street, where a sleek white car is slowly driving past.

“What kind of power makes your girlfriend break up with you?” Donghyuck snorts, but quickly skitters across the driveway when Renjun starts running after him. Jeno and Chenle watch the two, both looking like they regret every life decision they’ve made up to this point.

“Can everyone be quiet for a moment?”

Everyone goes quiet upon hearing an unfamiliar voice, shrinking back and turning in the direction it had come from. Renjun stops his physical assault on Donghyuck and lets go of his shirt as they both turn to look at the end of the driveway.

A black-haired individual stands at the foot of the driveway, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his black jeans. He strides up to the five of them and momentarily scans over their expressions, his own face remaining stoic and cold as stone as he shifts his weight from one foot to the other, then tilts his chin up. Something about the new person is much too familiar to Mark, as if he’d seen him somewhere before, but he can’t quite put a finger on why.

“I noticed the flames while I was sitting outside,” the boy continues, nodding in Chenle’s direction, who bites his lip and steps back into a wary, protective stance. “So I decided to follow you all.”

“Who are you? You can’t just walk away now that you know we have powers. This is sensitive goddamn information.” Donghyuck narrows his eyes at the black-haired boy, staring at him for a moment—before his face morphs into the same expression of vague recognition that had hit Mark earlier.

The boy takes a deep breath before answering. “I’m… Jaemin Na.”

“Jaemin Na? Like, the preppy sparkly pink-haired Jaemin Na? Most popular boy in the school? No way.” Jeno gives Jaemin a bewildered stare. “I share, like, three classes with him. You look like his emo twin brother or something.”

“Yeah, uh. See, here’s the thing…” Jaemin rubs the back of his neck, taking another shaky breath as he looks behind him, waving at the white car parked on the side of the curb. The passenger door opens, and out emerges a tall boy with scruffy hair and a sweater that seems much too big on him. He shuffles his way over to the rest of the group and settles behind Jaemin, peering at the group from the safety of Jaemin’s unfairly broad shoulders.

“Remember what you asked about powers earlier? We—me and my half-brother, Jisung—are also one—”

“Ah, good, you’ve all gathered together.”

A booming voice appearing from seemingly nowhere nearly makes all seven of them jump several feet in the air. They wildly look around for the source of the noise, feeling a chill in the air as an icy breeze sweeps past the group, making Mark shiver violently in his white jacket. It leaves as quickly as it had come, but not before making his teeth begin to chatter.

“What the fuck, dude? I’m not ready for an early winter.” Donghyuck seems disgruntled as he rubs his arms to keep warm, looking up at the sky.

“My apologies, Donghyuck Lee, I didn’t realize you were so high maintenance that you demand so much from everyone around you, including me, a shadow whom you just met!” As the voice speaks, a second shadow sprouts from Donghyuck’s, taking a bow and throwing their head back in laughter. Donghyuck’s jaw drops, and he remains silent and still save for the occasional blinking. The shadow holds a hand to their chin in a thinking motion, then gasps lightly, throwing their hands in the air.

“Anyways, where was I? Ah, right! It seems all the supers of N City High School have gathered here today because of a few precedent events. Am I correct, or am I correct?”

Mark shifts on his feet, feeling even more uncomfortable with this… shadow-voice thing than before. How did it know so much?

“Who are you?” Jeno asks, taking a determined step in the direction of the shadow. “What kind of game are you playing here?”

“That’s a wonderful question, Jeno Lee,” the voice starts, hopping out of Donghyuck’s shadow and twirling around in the center of the circle the seven have created. “I’ve had my eyes on N City High School for a while now. For years I have waited… Now that I am at the peak of my power—now that I’ve grown stronger in the shadows, I can act out my glorious plan.”

“Oooookaaaay… And what exactly is this plan of yours?” Chenle asks, not very entertained by the less-than-threatening shadow. His eyes are narrowed, and it’s clear that he’s quite suspicious of the shadow standing in the middle of the circle. Mark can’t really blame him there—the shadow speaks with the demeanor of a comic book supervillain, acting all high and mighty and making every attempt to sound as evil and threatening as possible.

“Isn’t it obvious by now?” The shadow asks, tilting their chin up. A curved slit of sunlight cuts through the middle of where the shadow’s face would be as they begin to laugh, creating the appearance of a wicked smile. “I believe you’re familiar with… what do you all call them again? The shockwaves.”

Mark’s heart skips a beat as he looks down at the shadow, whose “smile” has only gotten bigger. Everyone else seems visibly shaken at the mention of the invisible shockwaves that had caused their powers to run wild and out of control. It’s clear that none of them have ever had to deal with something like this before.

“Mark Lee! I believe you had quite the incident this afternoon at your student council meeting. Are you feline okay? Don’t worry, I’m sure the aftermath wasn’t too cat-astrophic. You’re the president, after all! It’s your job to clean up and play fix-it.”

Okay, maybe Mark is the slightest bit threatened. He feels more provoked and called out than threatened, but threatened nonetheless. I mean, yes, he shifted into a cat in the middle of his student council meeting, but were the puns necessary? And the call-out directly after?

“What do you want from us?” Mark questions demandingly, eyebrows furrowed. He glances over at everyone else, who look either confused or slightly

“Ah ah, wait. I’m not done talking yet. I’ll be taking questions after.” The shadow holds up a finger, as if to shush their seven audience members, then walks to stand in front of Renjun, crossing their arms.

“Renjun Huang. Oh, Renjun Huang, you’re the type to cause quite a mess, aren’t you? Using your manipulation powers as a defense mechanism, surrounding yourself with only the people you want to surround yourself with and making sure no one will even try to lay a finger on you. You go through life expecting everyone to follow your word—well, I hope you enjoyed your little world crumbling before your eyes.”

Renjun looks a bit more than horrified now, looking warily down at the shadow that simply cackles and moves onto their next victim—which seems to be Jeno, who takes a few steps back when the shadow stands in the spot in front of him.

“Jeno Lee... I’d have to say you’re one of the more careful ones out of this group. Always staying cooped up in that lab classroom of yours, never even thinking about using your power outside of the occasional phone charge when you’re running late, or perhaps fixing the flickering light in the hallway behind the school’s theater so the theater kids don’t have to fix it themselves. Good for you, honestly! I personally could never.”

“That was you? That light was broken for, like, a year!” Donghyuck looks over at Jeno in wonder, watching as the other nervously laughs and pushes his glasses up his nose.

“Oh, it was nothing… I just saw it flickering on my way to one of the shows and thought I’d go ahead and fix it.” Mark can see Jeno’s rosy red cheeks from miles away, knowing that his best friend is probably ecstatic for the chance to finally talk to his crush despite their current circumstances. The shadow unfortunately reminds everyone that now is definitely not the time to be gushing over their crush by moving onto the next person, who happens to be Donghyuck.

“Donghyuck Lee… Also not too shabby when it comes to keeping your powers to yourself. I have to say, though, you’re so creative with your telekinesis! My best buddy had telekinesis powers too, but he never did anything like levitate props on stage in front of a whole crowd during each show. Everyone must think you lot in the theater department have crazy amazing special effects! They’d never be able to guess that behind the scenes you’re not so much of a team player.”

“What can I say? I always like to steal the show.” Donghyuck seems a little bit smug at the shadow’s compliment, trying not to smile as the shadow hums and skips over to Jaemin. The last sentence finally dawns on him as the shadow stands in front of him, and his jaw drops. “...Wait, hey!”

“Jaemin Na… Jaemin Na. You’ve spent so long hiding in the shadow of this illusion of yours that you’ve created. You hardly know who you are anymore…” The shadow circles around Jaemin, who warily looks down at the moving blob of darkness and takes a step back. “And I suppose that might be your downfall. For now, at least. But this little meeting here isn’t me bringing you your downfall. I’m quite the fair player, after all. I’m acknowledging your flaws and giving you a chance to fix them before you try and fight me.”

“What kind of twisted Twitter callout thread is this?” Chenle gripes, fists clenched as he looks down at the shadow, whose neck jerks back in his direction. “What sort of authority do you think you have over a bunch of high school kids who barely even know each other?”

“Truly such a good question, Chenle Zhong!” The shadow declares, shuffling over in his direction. “I’m sure you know what you’re capable of. You’re responsible for a lot of fires in this area, you know! How’s controlling that power of yours working out for you? You’re young, and you really tend to isolate yourself a lot. Is it because you hate being around people, or because you don’t want to hurt anyone around you?”

“Man, this guy does not shut up,” Chenle mumbles with a nervous laugh. Mark can tell by his shaky voice and the way his eyes dart around to everyone else that the shadow might have struck a nerve somewhere deep within him. He hates how observant he can be sometimes.

“Well, moving on,” the shadow begins, making their way over to the final member of the group, who Mark vaguely remembers from just a few minutes earlier to be Jisung. “Jisung Park. Runt of the group, I suppose, since you’re the youngest. It definitely doesn’t make you any less powerful. Those metal powers can do crazy things, after all! Maybe if you stopped hiding behind your brother all the time…”

“And you saying this essential ‘constructive criticism’ is supposed to help us do what again?” Jaemin interjects, stepping in front of Jisung and holding a protective arm out in front of him. His eyes hold a threatening glint, one that pierces through Mark despite the fact that he isn’t even looking at him. Jaemin looks ten times scarier than before, looking down at the shadow menacingly. “Who are you to try and yank us out of our places and disrupt the peace we’ve created for ourselves?”

“I was just trying to bring you all together, that’s all!” The shadow raises their hands, as if attempting to play innocent and defend themself. “The only supers of N City High School. We’ve been waiting for some fresh blood to mess with. It really does get super boring uptown, you know. Besides, you didn’t think living in that lie of yours would truly last forever, right?”

“You’re from uptown N City, huh?” Donghyuck cuts in, stepping forward as Jaemin shrinks back, crossing his arms. “Are so-called ‘supervillains’ supposed to reveal their location like that?”

“That reveals… almost nothing if you do not know who I am. You realize uptown N City is huge, correct?”

“I have connections like you wouldn’t believe, man. I don’t think you know how many actors and actresses I’m in contact with from uptown.”

“... The ones who rejected your audition for Love Song Theater’s production?”

Donghyuck begins mumbling curses under his breath, looking angrily down at the shadow that simply cackles and throws their hands up in the air.

“Well, I suppose you all have had enough of me,” The shadow continues on without missing a beat, clasping their hands together. “You know why I’m here. I wanted to bring you together. Give a little insight into your flaws. Let you figure things out before I launch a full-scale attack on your silly little high school lives. That doesn’t mean I won’t mess about every now and then, though! I’m the villain of this story, after all.”

“You’re just… leaving us after all that?” Mark manages to ask as the shadow continues their insufferable speaking, looking down at the driveway with a mix of confusion and disbelief. He still can hardly believe the fact that there are other students with powers in the school, much less the fact that a villain brought them all together with some twisted intention to assemble a team. Mark has enough intuition from years of group projects and student council experience to know that no teamwork will come out of this “group”.

“Precisely! I was only here to introduce myself and you all. I’ll be taking my leave now that that’s all been done. Goodbye, then! I suppose you’ll see me sometime again in the future! Keep an eye out!” As they say ‘eye’, the shadow morphs back into a circular blob and disappears into the shadows of the tree just nearby, leaving the entire group stunned in silence on Mark’s front driveway. They remain like that for a while, occasionally shifting their feet as they try to process what just happened.

“Do you happen to have any snacks inside, Prez? I think I need to sit down and eat after all that.” Chenle breaks the silence, scratching the back of his neck as he looks around warily at everyone else.

“Please, just call me Mark,” is all Mark can say as he motions over to the front door of his house, rummaging around in his pockets for his keys.

🖤

Once again, the tension is thick enough to slice through as they all munch on a large carton of Goldfish snacks, gathered around Mark’s kitchen island like they’re in a council meeting. Mark can’t tell if he likes or dislikes the awkward silence at this point, but he definitely dislikes the glares that everyone is sending each other. At this rate, he’s going to have to break up another fight between Donghyuck and Renjun if he catches the two giving each other the stink eye again.

Like the good example he always usually has to be, Mark sets down his bowl of Goldfish snacks and takes a deep breath, finally breaking the silence.

“So, like, who actually listened to that whole thing?”

Jaemin scoffs and tosses another Goldfish snack into his mouth. “They lost me after they insulted Jisung. No one gets away with that on my watch.”

“Hyung,” Jisung pipes up from next to him in protest. “They really didn’t do anything to hurt me, it’s fine—”

“They still hurt your feelings,” Jaemin answers firmly, turning to look over at him. “Once I find out who the hell that thing is, I swear…”

“That… thing, whatever the hell they are, it knows way too much about us. Considering it’s some type of shadowy blob thing, it’s clear that it can lurk in the shadows and keep some kind of watch over us.” Donghyuck massages his temples with his fingers, staring down at the marble counter as he tries to use his brain.

“Didn’t they say they were responsible for the shockwave too? I say we just don’t mess with that shadow villain thing. I’m not trying to get involved in any dangerous activity here.” Jeno pushes his glasses up, nervously looking around at everyone else as he quietly munches on some of his favorite chips fresh from Mark’s pantry.

“Wait, what are we talking about? I heard dangerous.” Chenle looks up from where he had been playing games on his phone, excitedly looking around the room.

Renjun scoffs and waves everyone else off in the most dismissive manner possible, pushing his bowl of Goldfish snacks away. “This is ridiculous. Clearly the shadow thing was just making empty threats to try and scare us into hiding our powers more than we already have been. We should just go back to our regular lives and not give a damn about what some shadow blob tries to tell us.”

“If I’m being honest? I’m still kind of stuck on the fact that the Jaemin Na we’ve been to class with up until a few hours ago was fake, and that is the real Jaemin.” Jeno directs the topic away from Renjun’s point and looks at Jaemin, who shrinks further into his seat, biting nervously at the lip ring resting on his bottom lip.

“I really don’t want to talk about that right now—”

“You’re stuck on that?” Donghyuck asks with a laugh of disbelief. “I’m still stuck on Renjun’s power! What the hell even is it?!”

“It’s mind manipulation, idiot. I can manipulate people into doing whatever I want with my voice. Except it hasn’t been working since that stupid shockwave hit and it’s pissing me off!” Renjun’s chair makes an unpleasant screeching sound as he stands up, his chair nearly toppling to the floor and wobbling dangerously.

“I’m so glad my parents aren’t home right now…” Mark mumbles to himself as he discreetly shoves some more Goldfish in his mouth, contemplating grabbing some more snacks from his pantry as Chenle keeps an iron grip on Renjun’s wrist, preventing him from circling the kitchen counter to punch Donghyuck in the face.

It continues on like this for a while. The seven of them sit in tense silence, Donghyuck makes some sort of jab towards Renjun, maybe vice versa, Chenle and Jeno spend their time holding the two back from completely murdering each other, then Jaemin and Jisung talk amongst themselves occasionally. Mark sits back and observes the entire thing, occasionally sipping on the water he’d swiped from the fridge while the commotion was going on. No sort of plan is made in relevance to the villain that had threatened them just two hours ago, and everyone’s patience level is considerably smaller than before.

Eventually, one by one, they all leave by their own accord. Jaemin and Jisung decide to drive back to their home before sundown. Chenle has his chauffeur pick him up and take him back home. Donghyuck mumbles something about wanting to get away from Mr. Parasite (Renjun, presumably) and quietly shuffles out.

Renjun is the last of Mark’s non-best friends to go, quietly sliding off his kitchen chair and checking his phone once more before walking to the kitchen’s doorway.

“Since I’m so nice, I’m going to give you two overthinkers on the student council a bit of advice.” Renjun looks over his shoulder and spares Mark and Jeno one last pointed glance as he rests a hand on the doorframe. “Don’t bother with that shadow thing. Just play it cool, pretend that fiasco with our powers didn’t happen, and move on with your lives. I can do damage control.”

“Is it really that easy, though? What if he comes back?” Jeno shifts in his seat, looking nervously at Mark before looking back at Renjun.

He huffs, seemingly annoyed at the simple question. “I’m sure someone will take care of it. Besides, who said it was our job to stop some dumbass shadow guy with empty threats?” He adjusts the collar of his sweater, taking one more step past the door frame. “I’m literally a kid. We’re all kids. I just want to pass high school, get a girlfriend, and move to Hawaii. If that involves using my powers for my own gain in any way, then so be it! I’m not letting some random person who thinks they’re a scary villain ruin my vibe.”

With that, Renjun walks away into the foyer, leaving Mark and Jeno alone in the kitchen to exchange wide-eyed looks as the front door eventually slams shut.

🖤

A week passes, and like Renjun had anticipated, nothing happens.

Absolutely nothing. Life goes on the same way it had gone on before the shockwave—completely and utterly normal. It almost shocks Mark the next day when he begins to profusely apologize to the rest of the student council, only to get confused looks and sympathetic pats on the back in return. He suspects that Renjun has something to do with it, especially when he notices in the cafeteria during lunch that Renjun is back to his usual self again, surrounded by people who would normally want nothing to do with him, laughing the day away while hanging off of someone’s shoulder.

His powers are definitely back to normal, Mark thinks to himself with an eye roll. He finishes collecting his Coke from the cafeteria’s vending machine and walks away, his mind set only on finishing the pasta he’d left behind in the student council’s office.

Another week passes, and a shining Jaemin Na returns to school, pink hair and brown eyes shining brilliantly under the school’s hallway lights. It’s as if the world had never seen the darkly dressed Jaemin that Mark had seen a few weeks ago—this Jaemin Na barely spares a smiley glance in his direction, as if his only purpose were to be a simple distraction to everyone around him.

“I guess both he and Renjun like living in their own little lies, huh?” Jeno whispers to Mark as they walk past a gaggle of squealing girls chasing after Jaemin. He slings his bag over his shoulder as Mark shakes his head, and the two walk past the traffic in the hall and slip into the classroom hosting the study hall period they both share.

“It’s not like we can do anything about it. They’re their own people with their own powers, who are we to tell them what to do?” Mark lowers his voice to a whisper as they seat themselves in the corner of the classroom. Jeno takes his water bottle out and takes a sip as Mark continues. “They’d definitely make a great couple if Renjun got over his holier-than-thou attitude and realized that he’s probably bisexual.”

Jeno stifles a laugh, nearly spitting out his water as he places his hands on the desk to compose himself, exhaling as he swallows his water and looks at Mark. “Wait, you were serious?”

Mark shrugs. “I hate to assume like that, but the energy is there. It’s undeniable.”

“You’re really not wrong. You really, really aren’t.” Jeno opens his laptop and powers it on, sighing as he stares at the loading screen. “Mark, I don’t want to do this physics lab report. Why couldn’t I have gotten useful powers that’ll actually get me out of doing homework?”

“Because you’re a good student with good integrity and you actually don’t cheat your way through high school,” Mark replies, opening up his notebook and looking through his astronomy notes, all key terms neatly highlighted and underlined. “You’ve always been a good kid, Jen. Don’t change that.”

Jeno’s face reddens as he pushes his glasses up, trying his best to hide his smile by pulling his laptop close to his face. “Don’t get all cheesy on me now. The world might collapse if you do that again.”

Mark simply smiles and clicks through his astronomy homework with ease, answering the five parallax questions like it’s second nature to him. He checks off that box on his Notion weekly checklist and moves onto his next assignment. Mark and Jeno fall into comfortable silence when the teacher overseeing their study hall walks in, pulling out a book while the students in the room type away on their laptops.

🖤

Unfortunately, three weeks of peace and normality in N City High School simply isn’t possible.

On the third week after the shockwaves and the shadow encounter (that’s what Mark has decided to call it from now on), yet another strange happening occurs.

Mark is in study hall once again with Jeno when the lights shut off. He blinks confusedly, looking up from his laptop and sparing a glance at Jeno, who looks equally as confused. Power outages are quite uncommon for the somewhat fancy high school, but there have been a few in the time that Mark has spent inside the school.

“Huh, must be a power outage. Everyone just stay calm, the lights will probably be back soon enough.” The teacher calls out from the front of the classroom before returning to his book. The students begin mumbling and checking their phones for a news update on the situation, and Mark does the same to get a rough scope of the outage.

Checking the news app on his phone yields no interesting results, which means that the news outlets are either still typing up their live news article, or the outage hasn’t hit in any other part of the city outside the school.

“This isn’t a reason to panic, right?” Jeno whispers to Mark, who shrugs and shows him the news.

“Don’t overthink it, Jen. It’s just a regular power outage. The school electricians are probably checking it out right now.” Mark checks his computer’s battery power, sighing when he sees its status at less than half battery. Jeno notices this and places a finger near the charging port, sending a small bolt of electricity that charges Mark’s laptop to full power. He does the same with his own phone, then sighs deeply.

“I know it probably is just a normal one, but I can’t help and overthink things. Especially after something like that,” Jeno mumbles, and that’s when the sunlight goes out.

The sunlight going out is probably the best way Mark can word it in his head. All of a sudden, even the sunlight streaming in from the classroom windows is completely cut off, leaving every student in the study hall in utter confusion, with panic brewing quickly amongst the others. The mumbles in the classroom become panicked shout-whispers, and some students begin getting up from their seats to walk over to the windows covered in pitch-black.

“It’s like someone painted over the windows with black! I can’t see a thing.” One of their classmates pipes up, attempting to unlatch the windows, but retracting her hand quickly. “Jeez, why is it piping hot?”

Mark turns on his phone’s flashlights like the others have begun to do, pointing it in Jeno’s direction. He exchanges a look with Jeno, knowing the school being left in pitch-black darkness was definitely not natural.

Jeno’s phone chimes, which makes him jump in his seat and nearly drop his phone, but he squints at his notifications and gasps, covering his mouth with his free hand. “Jaemin just texted me. I forgot he had my number!”

“What did he say?” Mark asks, peering over Jeno’s shoulder at his glaringly bright phone screen. He sometimes questions his best friend’s decision to keep his phone in day mode all the time. He looks at the message, sucking in a deep breath as he does so.

Jaemin Na (school)

yo. sorry for the random message.

you’re the only person from that group i have the number of besides jisung

but i’m sure you're seeing what’s happening rn.

meet me outside the school theater.

🖤

It doesn’t take much effort to sneak out of the classroom and run through the winding halls of the school to get to the theater, seeing as many other students have opted to panic and run about the halls screaming for help. Mark isn’t sure what exactly that’s supposed to do in a silent crisis like this, but he can definitely imagine Jeno doing the same if he hadn’t had a slight idea of what was going on.

“How did you even get Jaemin’s number?” Mark asks Jeno as they jog their way down the hallway, dodging students flooding through the overcrowded hallways, running wildly into and out of classrooms, throwing themselves into their lockers, the like.

“We’re partners in our physics lab class, remember?” Jeno turns the hallway and dodges a flailing freshman, shutting one of the open locker doors and ducking to avoid a flying backpack. “Well, I’m partnered with that illusion of himself he puts up? I guess that’s still him, technically?”

Mark shrugs in response, looking ahead to see the double doors to the theater in the near distance. Two figures stand outside the doors, and Mark can recognize Jaemin’s pink hair from a mile away. It’s been a while, but he also recognizes Jisung’s tall, lanky figure when they begin to close the distance, dodging the seemingly endless sea of students freaking out. He catches something about the doors being locked from the inside as he passes by a bunch of students headed for other entrances, causing a small panic in his head.

Eventually, they reach the theater doors, where Jaemin is holding the door open and quickly ushering them into the dark room. The door shuts with a definitive click behind them, leaving them in quiet darkness, save for the sound of distant yelling and banging on the doors from outside the theater.

“Took you guys long enough.”

The sound of Donghyuck’s voice echoing through the auditorium makes Jeno nearly yelp from surprise and Mark jump in the darkness. They all simultaneously switch on their phone flashlights and look around, spotting Donghyuck sitting on the edge of the stage, legs dangling as he looks down at the ground below.

“I’m guessing the shadow guy is behind this mess,” Jaemin says with a hearty sigh, running a hand through his bubblegum pink hair and seating himself in one of the auditorium’s squeaky velvet red seats. “I didn’t think they’d follow up on their promises like this.”

“And make it the whole school’s problem? Yeah, me too.” Mark leans on one of the seats, looking around at the others just barely illuminated by their tiny phone flashlights. “How are we supposed to contact the others?”

“Oh, easy. I may not have either of their numbers, but I’m mutuals with Renjun on Instagram. I just sent him a message, hopefully he’ll follow through. If not…” Jaemin trails off, unsure of how to approach the hefty subject that was Renjun Huang.

“I’ll drag him out of his popular guy stupor myself.” Donghyuck finishes Jaemin’s sentence for him, hopping off the stage’s edge and running down the aisle to get physically closer to the rest of the group. “I bet he’s shaking so damn hard in the corner of the classroom right now instead of actually doing anything.” He crosses his arms, huffing as he looks over to the closed theater doors, as if he were waiting for Renjun to burst through at any moment.

Unfortunately, Renjun doesn’t burst through the doors in that lengthy second of silence. However, just as Mark is about to open his mouth again, the doors burst open, and Chenle slips through the opening, practically wheezing for air as he plops himself in the nearest chair and sighs deeply.

“Oh my God. I literally saw Mark and Jeno barely five minutes ago, but lost them in that damn crowd. Seriously, why are people going insane over being trapped inside the school?! Is there seriously no way out?” Instead of using his phone flashlight like everyone else, Chenle ignites a flame with his hand and holds his palm out, using his light to assess the situation as he catches his breath.

Everyone else in the room shakes their heads in response to his question.

“Oh.”

“He replied! Surprisingly.” Jaemin raises his phone in slight victory, then looks back down at the small string of messages. “He said ‘I was going to tell you to fuck off, but since you asked so nicely and I’m such a benevolent and kind person, I’ll meet you lot at the theater.’”

“Damn, what did you tell him that made his heart so soft?” Donghyuck asks, peering over Jaemin’s shoulder at his phone to sneak a peek at their messages.

Jaemin snorts and shows Donghyuck his phone screen, to which Donghyuck takes one look and immediately bursts out laughing.

“I guess the amount of kaomojis you use really suits your whole… whatever fake appearance you have going on .” Donghyuck comments between laughs. Jaemin’s smile fades, as if remembering that his current appearance is merely an illusion, as pointed out three weeks ago. With a wave of his hand, his pink hair fades into black, and his preppy school outfit changes into all black attire, as if his past look had been a layer of a digital painting erased with a few strokes.

“What matters is that it got Renjun here,” Jaemin replies as he crosses his arms, gesturing with his head over to the door, which is slowly swinging open. Renjun peeks his head into the auditorium, huffing when he sees the other six all looking over at him.

“I guess we’re all back together again,” he mumbles quietly, adjusting the collar of his shirt then running a finger over his dyed blonde sideburns as he shuffles his way to one of the seats.

“Yeah, I guess we are,” Mark says with a sigh, pushing his glasses up his nose and crossing his arms. “This… is something we definitely cannot ignore.” He doesn’t need to look at Renjun to know that he’s staring sheepishly down at the ground, shuffling his feet as if that will provide him any solace.

“Something you cannot ignore indeed!” An unfamiliar but familiar voice cuts in, echoing loudly throughout the auditorium and causing everyone to stand rigid, the seats swinging back into their folded positions as they pose defensively. A single spotlight from the left wing of the stage switches on and points itself to the stage right, where a shadow blooms within its tiny white beacon, walking proudly to stage center and spreading his arms wide, the spotlight following his every move.

“Oh, not this guy again,” Donghyuck mumbles with an eye roll. “Who do they think they are, stealing the spotlight like that?”

“Definitely this guy again! He’s all ready to rock your shit now that you’ve spent your time doing… what exactly?” The shadow pauses and puts a hand on his chin in a thinking pose, then puts his hands on his hips. “Ah, that’s right, absolutely nothing! What’s up with that?”

“Well, at least we know your pronouns now.” Renjun comments in a snarky tone, despite the gesture actually being quite respectful.

“My apologies for not saying them sooner! But anyway,” the shadow shuts the spotlight back off with a snap of his fingers, his voice echoing through various parts of the auditorium once again as he moves freely around the theater. “I warned you all, didn’t I? I said you’d be seeing me sometime in the future!”

“Were we supposed to have taken you seriously with your empty threats and whatnot?” Jeno yells at the ceiling, straining to see anything in his general vicinity with his puny phone flashlight.

“Well, maybe if you hadn’t listened to Mr. I Heard A Rumor over there…” The shadow trails off in a sing-song voice.

Renjun rolls his eyes and places a hand on his hip. “Villains are overrated, stupid, and none of our concern. What’s your deal with targeting a bunch of kids with powers anyway, huh? Scared we’ll pass our AP exams and instantly outsmart you when we graduate?” He scowls up at the ceiling, having not a single idea as to where Mr. Shadow currently is, but trying his best to locate him anyway.

“Oh, dear. I suppose that’s quite a good question. Why don’t I start by introducing myself?” The voice echoes and resounds as every spotlight on the stage switches back on. A swirling blob of darkness gathers in the center, from which a sharply dressed figure emerges, clad in all black with a black hat and black boots to match. A black porcelain mask with gold accents conceals his entire face, giving no hints whatsoever to a recognizable face.

“My name is Shade. I am said overrated and stupid villain that is none of your concern, I suppose.” Mark can almost see the grin under his mask as he lifts a hand and lets darkness surround the ground at his feet, swirling and spinning like an endless whirlpool. “I control the darkness and the shadows. I live among them in—”

“Right, right, so you’re edgy, we get it. Can we skip to the part where you let the entire school go or something? I’m sure you can hear them all screaming out there.” Donghyuck interrupts Shade, gesturing over to the theater double doors, the commotion outside distant but clear in the small moment of silence.

“Isn’t that your job, though? To stop me and get me to let them go? Come on, I know you’re all just itching for a fight.”

“No, not really, actually!” Jeno cuts in, pushing his glasses up and staring nervously at the dark figure on stage. “I think I really have to agree with Renjun for once, here. We’re just kids? Like, we really don’t want to fight. And you’re not gonna make us fight either.”

“Suppose I’ll have to pull the fight out of you all, then.” With a snap of his fingers, the swirling shadows around him disappear and dart throughout the auditorium. As the shadows crawl throughout the room, Mark hears a loud hissing noise, and when he looks down, he sees a shadowy hand grab at his ankle, making him yelp loudly and shift into his cat form, leaping onto one of the seats and sprinting away. Adrenaline rushes through his tiny cat body as the hairs on his back stand rigid, and he shifts back when he’s far away enough to not feel overwhelmed by panic anymore.

“Hey, don’t touch Mark like that!” Jeno yells, clenching his fist so hard his knuckles turn white. Mark internally panics when he sees the electricity crackling through his best friend’s fingers, ready to call him out—but Shade, ever so calm on the stage, speaks before he can open his mouth.

“Oh, how easy it is to get kids angry.” Shade says with a chuckle, stepping down from the stage as the shadows circle back to the ground under his feet, spinning and spinning and spinning like a whirling cotton candy machine. “I remember when I was immature and naive like you. I was scared at one point too. Afraid like you. All of you.” His masked gaze sweeps over the seven kids scattered about the room, and when he lays eyes on Mark, there’s no escaping the shiver-inducing stare that practically bores into his skull.

“I’m just like you all,” Shade continues, and the lights in the room slowly dim until everything is once again shrouded in darkness. Pitch black darkness.

“I can destroy anything with the touch of a hand.”

The room erupts into chaos as a flash of lightning strikes the stage, illuminating the room for an instant before leaving everyone in darkness again. The sound of chatter rings out from various spots within the theater, and Mark can barely follow the string of exclamations following the sudden lightning strike.

“Jeno Lee, why the fuck?!” Donghyuck’s voice echoes out somewhere from the right.

“That wasn’t me? That literally wasn’t me.” Jeno sounds more confused than panicked, his voice ringing out from the back of the theater near the exit.

“Who the fuck else could have shot lightning onto the stage? What if you damaged the damn stage, man? The theatre department barely gets enough money as is!”

“Ah, but that wasn’t Jeno,” Shade suddenly concludes, and the lights brighten to a dim level, everyone in the room just barely visible. The villain now stands in the front row of the auditorium’s seats, gazing upon the stage which appears to be completely spotless, free of any scorch mark that might have hinted that lightning had struck inside the building.

Mark’s mind makes the conclusion immediately, scanning the room for a certain black-haired individual. Sure enough, Jaemin is holding an outstretched fist out, looking at Shade with an intense glare burning hotter than Chenle’s flames.

“What a trickster you have on your team! I was fooled for a couple of moments, even braced for an impact.”

Chenle’s face morphs into a skeptical expression as he looks around at everyone in the room before looking back at Shade. “We… are not a team.”

“Oh, sure you aren’t. It’s not like Jaemin hasn’t already used his powers to protect you all, if even for just a moment.”

Jaemin lowers his fist, expression stoic and unchanging. “I’m not heartless. I wouldn’t want you to try and harm these guys, even if they aren’t my friends.”

“That’s the kind of thing I want to hear! How heroic of you to say…”

Jaemin rolls his eyes and exasperatedly throws his hands in the air. “I swear, you never shut up.”

“At this rate…” Donghyuck sighs and holds a hand out in the direction of the stage. The sound of a door opening in the distance can be heard, along with the sound of shuffling and crashing.

“Is that the props closet…?” Jisung asks hesitantly, eyes wide as he looks at Donghyuck, then in the direction where the noise came from.

“You catch on pretty fast, I like you.” Donghyuck smiles at Jisung, then holds a second hand up, and Mark can only watch as a hammer emerges from the left wing of the stage, hovering in the air and glinting under the brilliant stage lights. “Let’s pummel this damn shadow man until he leaves us alone.”

With a wave of his hand, he flings the hammer at a terrifying speed in Shade’s direction. Shade shows no intention of moving, instead letting the hammer phase right through him. The hammer hits one of the seats in the auditorium with a loud bang, the bottom of the seat falling off and clattering to the floor. Everyone stands at attention now, realizing that Donghyuck basically just declared war.

“How fun!” is the only comment that comes from Shade, giggles echoing across the room as he melts into the ground, disappearing as murky shadows dart across the carpeted grounds.

“I just wanted to shut your ass up, but apparently you can phase through objects now, so.” Donghyuck throws his hands up in the air and sighs exasperatedly, then yelps when he sees a shadowy hand emerge from the ground below him. “Okay, we should probably maybe actually do something about this!”

Donghyuck’s yell echoing across the room spurs everyone else into action. Mark watches as Jisung leaps onto one of the creaky chairs, then witnesses Renjun slinking his way over to the back of the auditorium where the bright red emergency exit sign sits. Unfortunately for him, though, a shadow that isn’t Renjun’s beats him to the door, and Renjun can only groan as the shadow on the door waves and shoos him away.

When Mark turns back to look at the others, he sees that there is now an auditorium full of clones of the seven of them, wandering around the room and sitting in seats as if a show were being put on. Some of the clones now even occupy the stage, a few Donghyuck clones bowing and prancing around while some Jeno clones sit in the row right in front, excitedly clapping for the faux performance. When he tries to place a hand on one of the Jisung clones in his vicinity, his hand phases right through it—Jaemin’s power definitely isn’t foolproof.

“You can run and hide, but you won’t escape me!” Shade calls out, making a few Jisung clones cower in fear. Mark shifts into a ferret and quickly crawls under the auditorium seats, skittering along the edges of the room before leaping up the steps to the stage.

He shifts back when he reaches the infamous props closet, the doors flung open and revealing the absolute sight that is the theatre department’s so-called expertise. He notices a tool kit on the floor and scrambles to grab it, along with a couple of empty hat boxes stacked atop each other, running back to the stage with a skip in his skip, trying not to let everything fall as he does so.

“Donghyuck, catch!” Mark calls out in his best stage voice, throwing everything he has in his arms in the air as hard as he can. The real Donghyuck’s head snaps towards the direction of the stage, and he holds two hands up, suspending the hat boxes and the tool kit in the air above the seats.

“Thanks, prez!” Donghyuck yells back before flinging one of the hat boxes past the various clones at the forming shadowy figure sitting on a seat in the front row. The hat box phases right past Shade’s head, and he stands up with a sigh, rematerializing into all his sharply dressed glory, walking down the center aisle of the auditorium with zero hesitation.

“I’m made of shadow and this didn’t even work the first time. Why did you think it would work now?” Shade chuckles and simply side-steps another hat box thrown at his face, holding out his hand and materializing a cane from the shadows.

“I don’t know, maybe timing has a factor in it?!” Donghyuck shrieks in a panic as he continues to fling hat boxes with his power, expression concentrated and eyebrows furrowed.

“Really, I’m more powerful than you think,” Shade comments with a sigh, tapping his cane on the ground and pushing his weight into it. Shadows begin to sprout from the cane, slithering across the ground and immediately poofing any clones within its vicinity. The clones dissolve into clouds of glittering purple dust that disappears in the air, and one by one, more and more begin to poof away as the shadows advance along the ground and leave no survivors.

“But we are too,” Jisung says.

The tool kit that Mark had initially tossed earlier is now in Jisung’s hands, and with a wave of his hand, the metal from each screwdriver and tool bends into itself and twists with the other pieces of metal in the bag, forming a growing amalgamation of metal tools that shapens itself into a sharpened blade. Even the screws from some of the seats fall apart and become one with the weapon under Jisung’s power as he concentrates on completing the contraption. The completed form of the creation looks somewhat like a sword. A very twisted and odd sword. But a sword nonetheless.

Jisung pushes his hand out and aims the metallic weapon straight at the side of Shade’s head. Unfortunately, the villain sees this coming, and melts into shadow at exactly the right moment. The metal phases through and crashes straight through the wall with a large crash, making Jisung’s shoulders sink. The clones in the room disappear as Jaemin runs to his side, worriedly wrapping a hand around Jisung’s shoulder and squeezing.

“You all are trying the same old tricks. Really, you couldn’t have thought of anything else? Anything fun for me to deal with? Perhaps a bit of teamwork on your end? I don’t know about you, but I’m sure you all can—” Shade is interrupted by a fireball hitting him square in the back, making his fancy sharp tuxedo burst into flames. He melts into the ground, leaving a flurry of falling scorched fabric in his wake, the embers fading as fast as they’d been created. Chenle stands just behind where Shade had been standing, hands lit aflame as he stares at the shadowy scorch mark on the ground.

“Finally,” Chenle breathes out. “He shut up.”

“Interesting,” Shade mutters from the shadows, his ragged breathing echoing through the theater as everyone looks up. “Very interesting, Chenle Zhong…”

“You gonna come out and fight us like you said you would? I’m not afraid.” Chenle looks up at the ceiling, staring at the flickering stage lights and the fading auditorium lights as the shadows fly in circles on the ceiling. “I’ll fight if I have to.”

“Hm… As fun as that would be, I think I may need to… reevaluate a couple components of my plan.” Shade rematerializes at the top of one of the stage props, not-so subtly clutching at his stomach as he waves down at the seven students. “I suppose this is goodbye for now. This won’t be the last time, though.”

Mark goes rigid as Shade melts into shadow again, the darkness seeping into the stage floor and the auditorium floor, sweeping past him like an unpleasant breeze that leaves a shiver up his spine.

“Until we meet again.”

And with that chilling line, light returns to N City High School.

🖤

The sound of cheering students and slamming doors is distant in Mark’s ears as they remain within the theater, every single light in the auditorium on. Donghyuck had immediately gone backstage to get the lights on again when Shade had left the school and caused the power to return to normal. None of them exactly wanted to sit in the darkness after that encounter.

“How did you figure out that your flames would hit that Shade guy?” Jaemin asks, leaning forward in his seat as he watches Chenle jump down from where he had been sitting on one of the ledges protruding from the wall.

“Well… I didn’t figure it out. I just kinda thought… Flame gives off light. Shadow is darkness. Darkness and light definitely don’t mix. So I took the chance while he was distracted with you guys and snuck up on him.” Chenle dusts his hands off and walks over to the theatre doors, opening it just a crack to look outside. The sound of chatter and thundering footsteps can be heard—school must have been let out for the day. Mark makes a mental note of checking the news when he gets home later.

“What do we do now? We can’t exactly go back to ignoring each other after that.” Jeno hugs his arms close to himself, clearly shaken by the entire sequence of events.

“Why not?” Renjun asks, adjusting the collar of his dress shirt and glancing over at the exit.

“Why do you think?” Jaemin snaps. “Villain or not, that Shade guy tried to attack us and imprisoned the entire school. He really is powerful. We can’t take that lightly, and we don’t even know when he’ll strike again.”

“I agree with Jaemin,” Donghyuck pipes up, pushing himself off the wall and crossing his arms. “Shade is too dangerous for us to keep sitting around and waiting for him to show himself again. We need to have a plan next time he strikes.”

“Every villain has a weakness or two,” Jeno comments, flicking a dustball off his jacket. “We need to try and find out Shade’s so we’re ready for the next time he strikes.”

“Hold on,” Renjun holds a hand up to interrupt the conversation. “Why the hell do we have to team up and play detective now? I didn’t sign up for this.”

“You didn’t,” Donghyuck admits, “but none of us did, really. Do you think we wanted some villain guy to attack the school? Whether we like it or not, it’s up to us to put our superhero hats on and get to the bottom of this before something more serious happens. What if he attacks one of us—”

Renjun interrupts Donghyuck with a glare. “We’re not superheroes.”

“Okay, we’re not, whatever. But you have to be careful of what you say and what you do outside of school now. Too many people are out there for you to keep track of, and you definitely can’t deal with something this dangerous by yourself,” Donghyuck points an accusatory finger at Renjun, likely referencing his sneaky habit of making people magically forget about the strange happenings related to their power. “You’re not that powerful. Just team up with us. It’ll be safer for you and the rest of us.”

“Hmph,” Renjun huffs out in response, showing no resistance to the statement.

“Now that we’ve got that out of the way… Are we all together in this?” Donghyuck glances around the scattered circle they’ve made by sitting in various spots near the theater entrance. One by one, Mark watches as everyone hesitantly nods, not having much of a choice in the matter. Shade had made that clear from the beginning—they were supposed to stick together, and they were supposed to find a way to defeat him.

“It’s the only way,” Jisung quietly adds. Everyone else is silent.

“Okay, good.” Donghyuck sends a soft smile over at Jisung, then takes a deep breath, stepping forward into the center. “Now, I think I know somewhere we can start. Do you guys remember how Shade said he was from uptown?”

“Do… you think he has connections uptown?” Mark asks, racking his mind for the memory of that fateful day three weeks ago.

“We can’t know for sure, but I think I know someone uptown who can help us.” Donghyuck pulls his phone out of his pocket and scrolls through a couple of apps before getting where he needs to get. On the screen is a picture of an ethereal and quite familiar looking man, his long grey hair framing his face in a way that makes him appear stunningly beautiful. He smiles as he bows on stage, sparkling under the spotlight. Mark can hardly believe it’s a still photo.

“His name is Taemin Lee. I think he might help get us started.”