Choseung wondered how she survived EMANON. 

Not a lot of things would've made her more irritated than getting a nice dose of yelling from the choreographer, seeing Aowen being better than her as usual even if she's not a dancer, and a day where she feels tired and just wanted to sleep.

And now her chest starts to hurt a little. She knows she's a little young and quite healthy to have a heart attack in the first place, so maybe that day was just a bad day, but life before comeback felt quite hard. She's already the worst performance-wise, and now they had to be successful or else it's back to trainee hell again for her.

She frowned. If she perform badly, would she be blamed too, just like the way Jiae did? No doubt beating a trainee up is infinitely worse than just a bad performance, but Choseung didn't like people insulting her, and she knew how mean people can be to underperforming idols (a lot more mean than their choreographer or Sammi or Aowen).

"Ah!" Aowen yelled, clutching her head. Right next to her, there was an orange bottle, slowly rolling to a halt. Everyone else turned their heads to her, but no one spoke a single word for a minute. 

"Who did that?" Sammi said. Rather than annoyed or furious, she looked harried, looking around to see the source of the orange bottle.

Everyone just looked awkwardly at each other, but Choseung slowly turned to her right, where her favorite orange bottle should have been located, idle.

Then she carefully reached for the part of her chest that had felt a little pain, and she realized it was the black pendant, and it had pressed hard enough on her skin that it left a little dent.

"Choseung? Is this your bottle?" Sammi asked.

"Yes."

"It was next to her," Yoonbyul said, hesitantly. "I saw it just flew away, but Choseung didn't throw it on purpose."

—

Aowen wondered who gets to decide their members.

"You're just doing it on purpose!" Aowen doesn't lose her cool as easily, but hearing more about this power thing and how there's a high chance all the members had it was... not something she liked. It's simply too unbelievable, something she'd only see in blockbuster fantasy Mandarin movies.

But the panic settled in when life wasn't going to be normal anymore. She's going to have to practice to control it, hide them, and try to be a busy idol while everything else was running wild. There's just too many things going on, and she wanted to know it now, so she could deal with it. But she couldn't, because everyone else didn't either.

"I didn't! Stop being so mean to me!" In hindsight, she could've talked nicely to Choseung about it or just kept silent, but Choseung's been going around being the most irritating brat since their debut, who was also a lot less mature compared to her age, and had gotten a lot of slack for not being good.

In summary, Aowen felt that she never truly deserved her spot in EMANON, unlike the older ones. Even as lazy as Jiyoo was, she was good at what she does.

"If only you hadn't come here —" At that moment, she heard a loud crash, and the world seemed to turn dark so quickly.

But not dark enough for her to see that her necklace had glowed, albeit faint.

—

Yoonbyul wondered what had actually happened.

She had just woken up from a nice slumber after a tiring day and a pounding headache, but Shinae came to her side, looking worried and telling her that Aowen had awaken her powers, broke the main lamp of their living room and Yoonbyul somehow collapsed right afterwards.

Yoonbyul stared at the older agape, wondering what had just truly happened, because the things that happened looked almost like an MCU-movie scenario, and it sounded cool too... so too bad, she couldn't see it and had to be the one who collapsed.

"Oh, and there was a bit of a blackout in our apartment, but I don't think that has anything to do with Aowen's powers..." Shinae said to the blonde, eyeing with wariness.

"Huh, so I might have caused the blackout?" Yoonbyul said, turning to Shinae. 

"I think... you might." Shinae said, hesitantly.

"Oh, that's cool." Yoonbyul said, non-chalantly. Shinae turned to her, looking as if she was crazy.

"You're okay there?" 

"Yeah... I think so." Yoonbyul knew that Shinae expected her to be a little more crazy or fearful. She expected the same thing as that too.

But for some reason, she didn't. Choseung's shown it and the shock has mostly worn off, and Yoonbyul's just curious on what she's truly capable of at this point. 

"I know you probably want to test on what you're capable of, but... it's summer and we still need the air-con." Shinae said, sighing.

Yoonbyul heartily laughed at that. In that moment, however, she saw that her necklace glow light blue too.

"Yoon... why is your hair like that?" 

—

Sammi wondered when did things started to have an entirely different meaning.

"You will have a lot of questions after this," Aeran said, looking at each of the members. "but that's something that you'll figure out later. Ultimately, the reason why you could have the capabilities and the necklace are to protect yourself against things that will harm you, and we can only do so much."

Sammi couldn't really think of things that she hadn't dealt with previously as a presenter that would have been too different with what an idol would face. Sure, now she had to sing and dance, but then she had her share of haters and fans, so it wasn't something that the company is unprepared for.

"How about us controlling and training powers?" 

"Right, we have our contacts and resources, so from now all of you will be trained, depending on your powers and the extent of your capabilities. Regarding time and debut, I'll discuss with your manager on the best way to take care of the logistics from here on."

Regardless, now she's stuck with this power thing and it's probably too late for them to change or break away from their contracts. Not that she'd have the desire to sue the company... not with the kind of excuse she's thinking of.

Sammi sighed, remembering that this was too much. She went to the fridge, and took out one of the leftover cakes that they had from the 'Iron Girl' celebration, because at least food will get something off your mind and if they're going to start working out a lot, eating a lot shouldn't be that bad.

But when she was going to get the spoon, her hand stopped mid-air, as if a powerful force had just stopped her from grabbing it. No matter how hard she tried to push between the small gap, she couldn't. Sammi scrunched her face, her hand still not giving up.

Then the stack of spoons just flew back against the drawer, causing a loud clanging sound. Sammi turned, noticing Yoriko and Jiyoo turning their heads from the sofa (what were they doing?), faces full of concern.

"Stupid spoons." 

—

Shinae wondered where would they be going.

As she saw the van took a different turn than their usual route, she shuffled a little, realizing that everyone else were barely catching up. 

"We're going to start the training around now," Junghyuk said. "someone's going to help you assess your powers and your current performance, and then we're going to go from there."

"Are you going to wait with us too?" Shinae said.

"Yes." Shinae could almost feel her heart race a little bit, but she inhaled deeply, trying to calm herself. Like right now she knows that Junghyuk is most likely just a human, but what if he could notice her looking weird?

"Unnie, you're acting weird enough already." Choseung said, popping behind her seat. Shinae frowned, pushing the youngest away from her position.

"Shinae-unnie is so mean!" Choseung pouted, crossing her arms. 

"No, you're being weird, stop whining just because I woke you up a bit earlier." Shinae said.

Choseung gasped audibly, and grumbled, sliding away into her seat (waking a disgruntled Jiyoo in the process). 

"Anyway, it'll take about 30 minutes from here, so you can take a rest too." Jung said, his eyes still focused on the road, but his voice seemed to soften a little.

"It's okay, I think I'm good."

"Nervous?"

"I don't really know what to expect." Shinae chuckled, trying her best to look away from Junghyuk. This is the first time she's ever talked more than a few sentences with their new, quieter manager, and she didn't quite know what to say.

"It's okay, you might be surprised at first, but they are very nice people." Jung said, and Shinae could see that his mouth curved up a little, the slightest smallest inch. That made him a little more handsome in her eyes, which was bad.

"Shinae, I think you might want to sleep." Sammi said, tapping on the girls' shoulder. The tone was not that of annoyance, but more like an amusement.

"Right, right. I think I will." Ignoring Junghyuk's questioning stare, she closed her eyes.

It has been a tiring week, after all.

—

Yoriko wondered why was she not tired yet.

"I'm impressed, you all have improved so much now," Heeyeon said, raising his eyebrows. "especially Choseung."

"Thanks." Choseung shrugged, but Yoriko could see that annoyance in her face.

Yoriko could only smile sympathetically, but they've been going non-stop the past few hours and somehow no one had asked for a break. Usually, someone would've made a mistake, and then repeat, and then after another hour they would just disperse.

But after they had their power thing, it seemed like their stamina increased so much too. And the whole training their powers at the compound also includes physical training, so it tremendously helped with their dancing in a different way that she had experienced in Soumu.

She felt a lot stronger, more agile compared to her peak at gymnastics. Their new comeback song was hard and fast, but most members could keep up and they improved so much that it covers for the days where they had to train.

"I heard Aeran was doing the whole 'bootcamp' thing for you girls, am I right?" 

"Something like that, yes." Yoriko said, smiling awkwardly.

"That's cool. Seems like it worked." Heeyeon nodded.

Yoriko sighed, because even with this whole 'getting stronger' and 'more powerful' was really cool and all, the powers she had... was something.

Honestly, when she'd realized she was still a 'replacement' for someone who was more experienced and talented, she didn't quite know what to expect. The members are nice and all, but sometimes she wondered if she's missing out on certain things before, what if she'd debut together with them, or what would have changed if EMANON wasn't really involved in this trouble in the first place.

Then there's the powers. She knew it definitely wasn't her fault, but things going awry when she'd entered the group made her feel she's the one who brought that curse upon them too, to bear things that would have been difficult even for people older than Sammi or Shinae.

Yoriko gently played with her choker, and it reminded her of the gaping void in her heart had felt. It was suffocating, pulling her to this dark abyss where she couldn't quite breathe, and the more she had gasped for air, the thicker and more difficult it was to pull away.

She could kind of feel it again.

—

Jiyoo wondered if this whole thing was worth it.

"Your powers are... telepathy." Hearing that from the advisor was only slightly disappointing. It felt like everyone else had the cooler powers of shooting things and stuff, but she had... reading minds, which was not only rather useless, she didn't like hearing minds.

"What's it like?" Jiyoo said, although now asking that she felt stupid. The woman must have felt the same too.

"Well... you are capable of reading people's minds. As straightforward as it sounds though, reading minds is powerful, and difficult to control."

"That sounds very nice." Jiyoo said.

"I know sometimes it will hurt to hear from other people what their true inner thoughts are, because ultimately we aren't perfect and we have our dark thoughts, but the more important thing is to let t hose thought affect you not to be a worse person, but use them to change your perspective for the better." The woman smiled.

"I see." but I don't know what those things meant.

"I know you will find it difficult to believe, but the greatest use of mind reading is not about you changing to be another person that people expect, but to be able to influence other people... by knowing what they expect of you."

"What if they could hear my thoughts too?" 

"Has someone did that to you?" Jiyoo remembered her conversation with Yoriko. It seemed like only Yoriko could have heard her, but she wasn't quite sure.

But the members haven't hated her more than usual anyway, so that's good.

"Well, kind of."

"I guess they were quite open to see where you're coming from."

"I don't see why they would do that." Jiyoo said.

"Maybe they are willing to know you more," the woman said, smiling. "it would be good for them to hear directly from you, instead of things that just suddenly came out of your mind."

author's note : this was a hard one to write, but i ended up going through this format and added a lot of 'spicy' elements that might make their dynamic as emanon more interesting :)

also probably heads-upping you guys that this isn't going to be a 'normal' idol group fic so there's like 1 or 2 releases throughout the 4 arcs.