It might have been easier to get Chanyeol to stop smiling than to convince him to practice with his powers.

Baekhyun and Chen were the same way, lazing in the living room together on the quiet day before their next concert, waving fans on themselves in response to the strangely high level of heat, the three of them together giving a bad name to everyone born in 1992. The main character of the movie that was on, a plucky girl with some forgettable name, was coating on the aegyo cringingly thick to gain the attention of her oppa, who was just as unimpressed as were the three snacking, web-surfing men in front of the TV.

Suddenly there was silence, and the three looked up, first at the TV, then over to see a rather annoyed Kai had appeared out of nowhere, holding down the power button of the remote.

“Hey, what gives; we were watching that…!” Chanyeol whined.

“What gives? The fact that none of the three of you have come to training in the past three weeks is what gives,” he retorted, lips upturned in a frown as his eyes narrowed at his three innocent-faced hyungs.

Chen and Baekhyun stopped piling snacks into their mouths and exchanged looks. “Is it really that big of a deal?" the latter answered. "It’s nothing to get angry over.”

“Suho sent me to come get you. If you think I’m angry, you don't want to see him right now. Either way, can you guys not tell it’s getting to be a problem? Your energy is accumulating because you haven't been practicing enough. Look, Chanyeol's already got power buildup, it's hot as in here."

Chen and Baekhyun immediately stopped fanning themselves.

“I don’t feel anything.”

“Me ‘neither.”

Kai was unimpressed. “Your dialect comes out when you lie, .”

At that moment, Kai’s phone began to vibrate aggressively in his pocket. When he answered it, he immediately flinched and pulled it away from his ear; the other three boys could hear Suho’s whine nearly clearly enough to hear the individual words. “Yeah, I got it, okay! You shouldn’t be yelling at me, yell at them!” he scowled as he flung the phone into Baekhyun’s hands.

“Hot potato, guys!” Baekhyun bumped it over to a surprised Chanyeol, who caught it just in time to pass it to Chen, whose lips curled up as he dangled it up to its owner.

“It’s for you, Kai-ya.”

Kai sighed as he snatched it back from Chen, choosing to put it on speaker rather than deal directly with the three. “Suho, just let them be for today, and deal with them after the show tomorrow.”

“They. Can't. Not. Practice; did you not see what happened during that show last year, when Baekhyun got power buildup!? We were lucky to be able to blame the fact the he started glowing during his song on special effects. It’s dangerous. If it's Chen or Chanyeol next time, someone could get hurt or die.”

“I don’t get power buildup,” Chen reminded as he continued snacking on his popcorn. It was true; despite doing nothing to expend his excess energy, he hadn't so much as given a static shock to a fan at a handshake event. Why his energy never seemed to accumulate to dangerous levels was unknown, to anyone but Chen himself, who chalked it up to his "electrifying personality" and wouldn't accept any other answers.

“Whatever; Chanyeol and Baekhyun at the very least need to get over here NOW,” Suho demanded, before hanging up.

“Guys…” Kai said, exasperated, “have you ever heard him this pissed?”

Chanyeol looked aside guiltily and stood up, chip crumbs falling from his sweatpants as he did so. “He’s right… Come on, guys. If we blow something up, it’s going to be the special effects team whose heads roll. Let’s go over.”

Baekhyun his teeth before standing as well, but Chen continued to balk.

“I swear to you guys, I’ll be fine tomorrow,” Chen said. “If something happens, I swear I will say I tampered with the special effects, leave the group, and jump off the nearest bridge.”

The other three went quiet at his statement, and Chen, sensing that they found what he said inappropriate on multiple levels, quickly added, “I just meant that nothing is going to happen tomorrow, so don’t worry. The real reason we practice like this is to relieve power buildup, right? If it doesn't affect me, it doesn’t matter.”

“It’s not just about power buildup, it’s part of our culture,” Kai said, starting to get angry rather than annoyed.

Chen’s eyebrows furrowed. “And how much does that planet's culture matter if we can never-“

“Jongdae, that’s enough,” Chanyeol hissed. Out of all of the members, Chen saw the least point in caring about their home planet, and while he knew it mattered deeply to Kai, he knew he could never fully understand why. Chanyeol, while he also didn’t particularly care himself, wasn’t about to let an argument break out.

Chen slumped back, folding his arms across his abdomen and looking straight ahead at the now black television. “I’m just saying, you guys who care so much about our 'origins' let this company make a mockery-“

“Jongdae, seriously, stop using your mouth and start using your brain,” the peace-maker snapped back again, reminding Chen of one of the more basic tactics the group had developed for maintaining peace in the house. When one member was running their mouth, taking time to step back and think how their words were affecting the others was usually enough to stop the situation from escalating.

“Sorry,” Chen said, not looking up at the silent but red-faced Kai, who simply nodded to indicate that he more-or-less accepted the apology.

“Are you gonna ride over with us?” Baekhyun asked of Kai, who shook his head.

“We don’t need to drive. I’ll teleport you two.”

“Wait, I thought you needed Luhan’s telekinesis to teleport more than just yourself,” Chanyeol said, eyebrows knitting together in confusion as he donned one of his caps, a black one he couldn't wear in public that read, " The World."

“Luhan’s not exactly here anymore… so I’ve kind of been practicing...”

“ing sweet!” Baekhyun yelled. “Wait,” he said, taking a half-step back, “you have done it on people before, right? We’re not going to come out like, scrambled or something, are we?”

“Um… First time for everything, right?”

Baekhyun and Chanyeol looked at each other.

“So you’ll call the manager, right?”

“Already on it,” Chanyeol replied, speed dialing the number as the two walked toward the door.

“Aw, guys, I can do it, I know I can!” Kai whined, following the two through the entry. “Guys, I need someone to test it on! Guys!”

As they continued to give him the silent treatment, he sighed, teleporting only himself back to the large gym they rented out bi-monthly for group practice. It was a dilapidated structure that was only not "abandoned" in the sense that someone still claimed to own it. A vine had found opportunity and grown in where one of the window panes bordering the top of the high walls had shattered, many spiders and a few birds had decided the building was an absolutely wonderful home, and the lights, running on an electrical system that hadn't been properly maintained for years were unpredictable. However, the building's place on private land remote enough for no one to hear even the most attention-catching of noises, natural resources nearby meant and the owner, just happy to have some income off the stucture she no longer cared to care for, didn't question the dents in the old, wooden floor, or when another of the grimy old windows ended up broken.

Upon Kai's reapparance, Sehun immediately crashed into him, clashing forheads with him and sending the younger to the ground.

“You’re not supposed to teleport into the gym!” Sehun complained, rubbing his forehead as he accepted the hand Kai offered him.

“Sorry, you okay?” he apologized immediately, noticing that Suho's bad mood had spread in his absence and deciding it was best to avoid another argument. He’d forgotten, in his distraction, to teleport into the small empty office adjacent to the gym, not directly into the occupied room.

“I’m fine,” he said, dusting himself off before flexing the wrist he’d used to break his fall.

“Are they coming?” Suho, Sehun’s sparring partner asked, the annoyance still fresh on his voice.

“Chanyeol and Baekhyun, yes. Chen, no.”

Suho sighed. “He’s been in kind of a mood lately, yeah?”

“Well he damn sure hasn’t been all rainbows and unicorns,” Kai said, placing his hands on his hips as he watched the other two pairs of members work on their attacks. Tao was engaged with D.O., who was rapidly slamming large rocks against Tao’s time slowing powers. The gym floor vibrated as each near-boulder stopped in mid-air and hit the padded area of the floor. Xiumin and Lay practiced individually, the former working as he recently been on freezing substances with lower and lower freezing points; today’s was liquid fluorine, which Kai could see from the frustration on his face that he was still having trouble with.

“Is he usually all rainbows and- Ow!” Sehun turned his wrist in the wrong direction and realizing his earlier statement of "I'm fine" was untrue.

“Let me see,” Lay said from across the gym, leaving his place working on an wild boar piglet with a heart defect and hustling over. Being unable to risk having his powers revealed, Lay seldom got to work on humans or other living creatures. Most of his practice time was spent meditating to increase the amount of power he could retain, so when there was the opportunity to heal one of his fellow members (which between being professional dancers and superpowered aliens, was fairly regularly but not regularly enough,) he was more than happy to do so. Being able to work on a wild creature, most likely a runt that had been abandoned by its mother because of its condition, was great, and the fact that the heart structure was so similar to a human's made it nothing short of a miracle.

Kai smirked in reply to Sehun's question about Chen's mood. “He's not nice to you ‘cause you’re a to him half the time.” He allowed Lay to get to work on Sehun’s wrist, and turned his full attention to Suho. “Wanna do speed drills?”

“Sure.”

The two moved to the unoccupied corner of the gym and began their practice, Suho summoning up the puddle of water he’d left on the floor, trying to anticipate where Kai would land next and hit him ahead of time. Kai was getting a lot better with reacting quickly; most of his practice up until a few months ago had been on teleporting over distances, until he’d once misjudged a distance and teleported himself immediately in the path of an 18 wheeler on a back road; unable to teleport back, he’d had to jump out of the way of the blaring horn and glaring headlights barreling toward him. As the truck came to a stop, and the door opened to angry yelling, he hadn’t stuck around to hear the rest.

When Chanyeol and Baekhyun arrived, Suho looked at the door, but upon turning back and making eye contact with Kai, he decided that chewing them out wasn’t the best way to get them to come again next time. He settled for a sarcastic yell of, “Glad you two could make it!” adding a smirk to let them know it was in good, dry humor. The two smiled sheepishly back, and Kai threw his smile into the mix, happy that they weren’t going to have another situation on their hands.

“Suho, let’s go against Chanyeol.” Xiumin yelled, having sensed the heat the moment the guy had entered the room. The corners of his mouth rose. “I think he’s got a lot of pent-up energy.” Even though he'd been practicing so fervently, Xiumin could feel his own remaining energy stirring. Normally Suho would go against Chanyeol alone, but Chanyeol's excess of energy would provide Suho and Xiumin a great opportunity to practice with supercooled water and ice.

Suho looked at Kai. “I’ll practice sensory with Baekhyun and Sehun,” Kai said, noticing that Lay had finished with his wrist and they were now both examining the piglet. As good as the other were getting with tracking Kai, Baekhyun and Sehun were far superior to any of them, being able to sense the changes in light and movement of the air where Kai disappeared and reappeared. “Sehun, let’s go!”

As their energy dissolved into their attacks, so did the tension that had existed earlier, and by the time they’d sufficiently reduced their powers to the point where the fatigue from the concert had no chance of causing a power-related incident, all they could think about was who was going to sweet talk the manager-on-duty into picking them up an extra chicken on the way home, forgetting that there’d been any sort of disagreement at all.