It took Kyungsoo less than a minute to decide that he hated his new room.

It took Sehun less than five to decide he pretty much hated his new roomate.

"What is this carpet," Kyungsoo complained, prodding it warily with one sock-encased foot. "It's green," he elaborated in disgust, giving up with his sock-prodding and turning to grab a plastic tube instead.

Sehun sat on his newly-made bed which reeked of something vaguely milky and antiseptic. "Dude," he tried for the seventeenth time. "It's not gonna bite you. Get over it."

Kyungsoo gave him a look of the deepest disgust. "No. It's just going to vomit its horrendous greeness all over my precious stuff. I color-coded my wardrobe, for goodness sakes, because God knows how difficult it will be to look good at a boarding school."

There was the dreaded word again. "It's not a boarding school," Sehun snapped back, rolling onto his back and staring up at the vaguely discolored ceiling. "It's a school for gifted children."

"As if." There was suddenly another presence in the room, one that reeked of black smoke and freshly mowed grass, for some reason. "That's what they say at all these schools."

"What the hell," Kyungsoo groused, temporarily forgetting his quarrel with the carpet in favor of jabbing the stick at the offending person. "Our room smelled moldy enough already; now you've gone and made it all grassy. I hate grass."

The newcomer raised one dark eyebrow. "And you are...?"

"I have to live with him," Sehun complained. "For an entire year, since the school decided that roomates couldn't be changed. Ever."

"Within the year," Kyungsoo corrected, rolling his eyes. "And you're one to complain; I can literally sense the mold crawling over your clothes."

"Really?" the newcomer asked, all traces of nonchalance washed away in the face of bright curiosity. "So you can control plants or something?"

Kyungsoo rolled his eyes again. "No. I can stomp really hard."

There was a slightly awkward pause of pure disbelief.

"Really?" Sehun exclaimed while the newcomer burst out laughing. "I can do that too. I thought this was for gifted children, not people who can throw tantrums and stomp really hard."

Kyungsoo bristled. "It's not just stomping."

"So, what? Can you punch really well, too? Scream loudly? Make butterfly wings drop off whenever you stomp from the sheer sonic power of it?

"I don't know," Kyunsoo said, throwing his hands up exasperately. "Some weird shades guy came to my house one day, told me to focus my energy or something, and then stomp. The ground kind of broke. My mom had to replant two lines of tulips."

"I can teleport," Newcomer announced like it was the best thing in the world.

"We could guess," Sehun responded drily. "At least it's not as bad as stomping really hard."

"Hey!" Kyungsoo protested, cheeks flushing. "The guy said it was actually a really useful power."

"Of course it is. Great for whenever you need your garden replanted."

There were two high spots of vivid red on Kyunsoo's cheeks now. "So what can you do?" he asked loftily over Newcomer's laughter which had recently degraded into a pattern of undignified snorts. "Be condescending?"

Sehun shrugged. "Don't think that's much of a power, but sure. I can control wind."

"That's..." Newcomer tilted his head to one side as if listening to something. "Hold that thought."

There was a random puff of black smoke, a slight hint of burnt rubber, quickly followed by a slightly larger puff of black smoke and a whiff of the previous grassy smell.

"Noooo," Kyungsoo moaned, waving his hands around in a futile attempt to clear out the smoke. "I don't like grass, for goodness sakes."

"I didn't get to choose the smell that came with it, you know," a disembodied voice drifted out. "It's not like I would have chosen grass and rubber."

"I don't mind the smell," a second boy chimed in as he stepped out of the smoke, shaking his hair out. "Could've been sulfur or ammonia or something."

Kyungsoo stared. "Span of maybe ten minutes in my new room and already two people have barged in without giving me so much as a name. Really?"

The original newcomer laughed, a bright and cheerful sound that seemed to light the dank mustiness of the room. "Sorry. I'm Kim Jongin and this is apparently my new roomate, and I'm sorry to say I don't remember his name...Kim Joonsomething?"

"Joonmyun," the second newcomer corrected, smiling brightly.

"Sehun, and the self-righteous idiot over there is Kyungsoo."

"Look who's talking," Kyungsoo bit back. Sehun was beginning to vaguely wonder if those red spots would be permanent if he kept them up long enough.

Jongin sighed. "Chill, guys. You've got the rest of the year to argue with each other."

"Does your room have the same color carpet as ours?" Kyungsoo asked, his nose wrinkling in distaste. He picked up the tube again and returned to poking at the carpet.

"Our carpet's brown," Joonmyun replied. "It's not pretty, but it's not quite as...offputting...as yours is."

"Our carpet ," Kyungsoo agreed flatly.

Sehun stared at him. "What the hell are you expecting it to do? Vomit all over you? And what are you poking the carpet with, anyways?"

"It's a pipe and I'm checking for spores," Kyungsoo snapped. Sehun wasn't sure if he was being sarcastic or not.

"Really?" Jongin stepped around him, sitting down gingerly in a rather beaten chair next to one of two windows in the room.

Kyungsoo flung his hands up into the air in exasperation. The pipe hit the ceiling with a loud crack that reverberated through the room.

There was a muffled "What the hell?" shouted from the room above.

"Um...oops?" Kyungsoo said. "Anyone knows who's living there?"

Jongin shrugged. "I can go check," he offered, making no move to get up from the chair.

"Nah," Sehun replied, sitting back up on his bed. The springs protested under his weight, and he winced. "This room . You'd think they'd give us better living spaces at a 'special school'."

"Maybe it's an underfunded school," Joonmyun suggested, leaning back against the doorframe. "Or maybe this was just the best they could get on short notice or something."

"This place doesn't look inhabited, though," Kyungsoo said, disgusted. "The room smells weird, the beds creak, the carpet's moldy, there's old stains on the ceiling,  and I swear there's something living in those curtains."

"The hallways and bathrooms aren't any better. I wanted to take a shower or something, but - "

Joonmyun was interrupted by a loud sharp banging from below, followed by harsh shouts of "Open the door!"

"What the ?" Sehun breathed.

"I don't know," Kyungsoo replied. His eyes were wide, and there was a flicker of something - fear? anticipation? - in them. "The letter didn't say anything about-"

"Open the door or we'll break it down!" the voice shouted again.

Joonmyun looked at all of them, his face taut with apprehension. "Should we-"

He didn't get to finish the thought as there was a momumental crash downstairs.

"!" Sehun heard someone scream, and then someone grabbed his arm. There was a quick whiff of burning rubber, then a strange sensation of being dissolved in air, the individual molecules of his body spreading across the range of space followed by an equally strange sensation of being compressed -

 - and then he was standing in a different room, surrounded by the black smoke that so annoyed Kyungsoo and there were two other boys staring at them now.

"What the hell?" the shorter one asked in the same tone of voice that they'd heard earlier when Kyungsoo had dented the ceiling with his pipe.

Sehun had time to say "I don't know" and look around at the equal confusion on everyone else's face before men dressed in dark brown with stark iron helmets burst through the door, brandishing white pistols and black shields -

 - and then someone (Kyungsoo, the sole rational part of his mind thought; he probably stomped, remembering the shaded man's words) caved the floor in, and Sehun was falling, something hitting hard against his left shoulder and the side of his head -

 - but there were men there, too, and the last thought he had was oh I'm going to die before something sharp stabbed into his side and eyes rolled back and he thought no more.

a/n: please give constructive criticism because i did not proofread and it most likely really bad. thanks for reading. i really appreciate it.