Purple and black. Everywhere he looked, purple and black. Everything he wore, purple and black. Just once he was going to shake things up and wear black and purple, see how many people had a heart attack.

Cho Kyuhyun absently flipped a bookmark between his fingers as his eyes barely scraped over the printed words on the page in front of him, hardly registering the fact that he was supposed to be studying for his next-level entrance exam. Tomorrow he would be going for his Magus level, and there was quite the high standard that needed to be adhered to even before sitting the exam.

The only thing Kyuhyun didn't like about Magus level was the ugly purple and black robe that came with it. Not that his current Disciple robe was any better, but if given a choice he'd rather wear a paper bag. Ever since the Citadel Tower had been taken over by some wizened old man carrying a huge stick with a black orb at the end of it nearly ten years ago, the colour scheme around the place had become somewhat monochromatic. And unless Kyuhyun had been living under a rock the whole time he'd been at the Tower, not as many people were coming and going like they used to...

"Cho!" barked a senior member of the Tower, making said named person jump a foot off their bed, "It's your turn to entertain the pr...I mean, the guests." Kyuhyun swallowed a groan and carefully got up off the floor, dusting himself off and checking his robe for crinkles. One thing he could enjoy about being a Magus was not having to check up on the prisoners guests, and ensure that they were well looked after despite their reasons for being locked up. Most of them were political prisoners, and had been locked up "to protect themselves and the community".

Kyuhyun had choked on air the first time he heard that.

Following the senior member, the Disciple had time to glance around and see what his fellow Disciples were up to. Some of them were listening to a tutor explain why the Arcane was nothing more than silly superstition and false legend, while others were kneeling around a Shine Altar and praying. More and more Disciples, he noted absently, were wearing black collars around their necks, but he had no time to ponder that as he was roughly shoved down a flight of stairs into a long hallway.

"See you tonight~." The sing-song voice, coupled with the maniacal laughter that echoed around him, did nothing to ease Kyuhyun's grumpiness as he got up and dusted himself off. Slowly he began to amble down the long hallway, taking note of the number of empty cells he passed. Was this some sort of Magus joke, because if it was he certainly wasn't finding it very funny at all.

"And so now you finally decide to show up. I thought I was going to die of boredom down here!"

Kyuhyun swore he died on the spot when the voice suddenly came from his right, reverberating throughout the hallway. Turning to look into the cell, he saw a tall man with long limbs and a look on his face that suggested he'd sprouted whiskers and had been skulking through a dairy farm. His twinkling eyes raked Kyuhyun over, and for the first time in many years Kyuhyun felt exposed and vulnerable.

"What the hell?!" he suddenly squawked, "I'm not on display!"

"You very nearly wet yourself, though. Oh, I am still too good," cackled the prisoner, "But I suppose that's the only fun I'll get to have today."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm actually here on business, little Disciple. You ever heard of the Arcane or the Crown Jewels?"

"O-of course I have! The Arcane is a myth, told to keep us all in line and -"

"And, what, it's an evil nasty that deserves nothing less than what you're doing to me right now?" Kyuhyun faltered, "Look around you, brat. Do you think that the colour scheme here was just a random choice? There's Black Arcane at work here in your Tower, and unless you want to see yourself a victim of it you'll let me spring both of us out of here." Kyuhyun bit his lip, mostly to stop himself from biting back at the 'brat' comment. He had two choice at this point:

Option One: Hear out the prisoner and do as he says, leaving behind everything you've known for the last half of your life but possibly sparing the rest of it.

Option Two: Ignore the prisoner's warning, and possibly die within the year.

He wasn't called a genius for nothing.

"What's your name?" he finally asked. The cat-like grin on the prisoner's face seemed to get wider, if possible.

"Kim Heechul," he replied, "and I'm here to turn your world upside down."

~~~~~~

Heechul tapped a slender finger against his chin. "Hm, that wasn't supposed to happen."

Kyuhyun stared at him in astonishment. "You just put half a legion of police officers to sleep, and knocked one out!" He cast his eyes over to the burly shape pulling his partner out of the line of fire.

"Eh, they'll be fine. Someone's watching out for them." Cat-like eyes glanced up at a dark shape overhead, "Now come on, I don't want to be here when they wake up." Grabbing the Disciple's hand, Heechul dragged him away from the sleeping men and through a series of streets and alleys before they came to a stop at a section of the wal that separated the Citadel fron the rest of Jewel City.

Kyuhyun's eyes widened. "We're not walking through a wall." He planted his feet firmly on the ground and Heechul scanned the wall in front of them critically.

"What the hell do they teach you in the Tower?!" he exclaimed, eyes still on the wall, "Of course we're not walking through a wall!" Reaching out, the older man pressed down on a stone block, waiting until it glowed white before removing his hand. The ground at his feet quivered and yawned, opening up to reveal a darkened passageway and a set of stairs leading down into it.

"We're taking the stairs." he declared, descending down. Hesitantly Kyuhyun followed him down, uncertainty and frustration marking his every movement. This guy - Heechul, he reminded himself - had just taken his world for the last half of his life - everything he'd known, everything he'd been taught - and promptly thrown it out the proverbial window with the display of Arcane he'd performed to open the passage they were walking down. He wasn't stupid; he knew what Arcane was. But to do it so freely...

"We're here~!"

They'd stopped at another set of stairs, this one ascending up to...well, to a closed door that seemed to glow with the lights above.

"Well, come on. We're expected, you know." Heechul had climbed the stairs and reached the door, rapping on it thrice with a thin knuckle. he door opened suddenly, flooding the passageway with light, and a tanned forearm reached down into their semi-darkness. Heechul grabbed the forearm and pulled himself up into the light, and when the forearm came back seconds later Kyuhyun did the same.

The forearm belonged to a tall - taller than the Disciple, damn it - muscular man with short raven hair styled in a slight spike at the front. Warm coffee brown eyes glinted with the same light as his dimpled smile, yet there was an unmistakeable tiredness in them that was hard to miss. He was dressed plainly - stonewash jeans, printed T-shirt - and Kyuhyun suddenly felt overdressed, even compared to Heechul's similar getup.

"You must be the Disciple Heechul was going to fetch," said the man, his smile not leaving his face, "It's about time you showed up. I thought that hyung was blowing hot air about the place when he told me about you." The Disciple had th edecency to give Heechul an affronted glare, but the older man simply shrugged it off.

"Hey, at least I did something with the information I was given." he snapped.

That made Kyuhyun narrow his eyes dangerously. "What are you talking about?" he growled.

The tanned man spoke up first. "Well, you see...er..."

"Kyuhyun."

"Right. Well, a while ago both Heechul hyung and I were contacted by someone who said that they knew you and that you were going to be in danger if you stayed any longer in the Citadel. The only way we could get you out of there was by the prison break."

"Well, that explains a lot." Heechul scowled at Kyuhyun's obvious sarcasm.

"This is Choi Siwon, called 'Doctor Diamond' around here because of the way he handles himself and his patients." the older man said, introducing the two parties, "He also recently became specialised in Chaser injuries." If Kyuhyun's expression could get any darker, someone would've been struck by lightning.

"So why am I here?"

"Do you have anywhere else to go?" That shut the Disciple up, "Look, Siwon's a good guy. He'll look after you." With a flouncy wave, Heechul bounced back down the stairs to the passage before the door closed over him, leaving the two men in an awkward silence.

"I guess I have no choice," Kyuhyun mumbled finally, feeling most of his courage leaving him as he admitted his fault, "Aside from that one-" He jerked a thumb at the closed door, "-you're the only other person I've met." Siwon's smile seemed to get brighter as he led the now ex-Disciple (that was going to take some getting used to, Kyuhyun thought) to another room, this one fully furnished as a bedroom.

"This is actually a workhouse," Siwon explained, "A few years ago I discovered my medical talents were more useful outside the Citadel, so I set up here and never looked back." Kyuhyun frowned slightly at the vagueness of Siwon's explanation, but nodded numbly anyway, still unable to absorb all that had happened to him in the span of twelve hours. To think the most stressful thing on his mind a while ago was becoming a Magus...

"What's going to happen to me now?" he asked finally. Siwon clapped a hand on Kyuhyun's shoulder.

"I've come across many people like you, Kyuhyun. You're welcome to stay here as long as you need to, and we'll take each day as it comes." he replied, leaving the ex-Disciple to his own thoughts for a while.

~~~~~~

"He's very anti-Arcane, even after getting him out. Are you sure he's one of what you're looking for?"

"I haven't been wrong yet, Heechul. I never lie about what I see."

"But Siwon too? Does he know the true origin of his nickname?"

"The less both of them know right now, the better it is. We're still trying to gather them all together and ensure the third one will be ready."

"None of them will be ready."

"There is only so much the four of us can do. Jongwoon's been updated and is on the lookout for now, but I'm not sure how much long we can keep the third one's suspicions in check."

"Let's hope the Chasers stay away for a little while longer."

"Indeed."

Author's Note: Question time~!

Who was Heechul talking to?

Why was Siwon's explanation so vague?

Should Kyuhyun be concerned about the black collars he saw?

All the answers and more later in the story.

Ciao!

-GuardianOfTheDawn