“So that’s it.” Jungkook stares at the two men sitting across from him. The two are mirror images of each other. Well, mirror images if the mirror is a funhouse mirror.

The stretched out, oddly knobby version of Park Jimin shrugs helplessly while the  all-the-parts-in-the-right-places version of Park Jimin sits beside him silently, looking miserable.

“You’re really going to go,” Jungkook confirms again.

The jacked up version of Jimin nods again, slumping back against the wall of the dingy, dark, windowless basement apartment the three are occupying.

Jungkook paces the minuscule open space of the single room flat, driving his hands into his hair. “I can’t believe this.”

“Jungkook,” Low-Rent Jimin starts, the gravelly voice coming out of the wrong body more than a little unsettling. His entire body shimmers and wobbles as he speaks. “Jungkook,” he tries again, “you know that --”

There’s an audible popping sound. The cracked out Jimin body shimmers again, and with another pop, snaps back into the form of Kim Taehyung.

“Talking still not working for you yet?,” Jungkook asks with a smirk.

“I’ll get there,” Taehyung grumbles. “I’ll get there at the Academy.”

“I can’t believe you’re GOING,” Jungkook exclaims again. “You’re going up there. With them. It’s the last thing I thought any of us would do.” He spins on his heel at points at the real Park Jimin, still huddled against the wall on the mattress on the floor. “Would you go?”

Jimin shrugs. “You know I don’t have any powers,” he responds simply.

“But if you suddenly did,” Jungkook insists fiercely. “Would you go up there? To the high levels? With all those people who spend their entire lives coming up with ways to keep us down here? Stomped down until they need some grunt work done that they’re too good to do themselves? For the love of , Jimin, they call us others. Like we’re an entirely separate, dirty species.”

“Jungkook,” Jimin says softly. “It’s a good opportunity for him. It’s been a long time since any of us got the chance.”

“Sure,” Jungkook snorts. “A good opportunity to get out of here, to get up there with them, and get a job making sure none of us follow you.”

“You’re not being fair,” Taehyung breaks in. “That’s not what this is about. That’s not who I am and you know it.”

“I thought I knew who you were. I thought you were just like us. Disgusted by all of this. Disgusted by what they do to us. Disgusted by what they can get away with while we’re slapped back down for even putting a toe out of their imaginary lines. Turns out, I was wrong.”

“I didn’t ask for this!,” Taehyung cries. “I didn’t know this was going to happen. You know powers don’t run in my family. You know we’ve been down here forever, just like your family. And I expected that’s how it always would be.”

“But you’re out of here the second you get the chance!”

“Wouldn’t you be? You can’t say you wouldn’t be. This is huge for my family. I can go to the Academy, get a good job, and bring them up. I could bring you two up.”

Jungkook snorts again and even Jimin rolls his eyes. That’s not how it works at all, of course. Those on the lower levels of the towering cities scattered sparsely over the planet tend to stay there. Sure, they may get to visit the higher levels with the clean streets, fresh air, and beautiful scenery once in a great while. Maybe when there’s new construction going on and they need bodies to get the work done. Or when the trash needs to be collected and dragged away out into the dangerous plains beyond the city walls. Sure, the Others are good enough to pop on up top to handle anything that may get their superiors' precious hands dirty. But to live up there, for real? To have a chance at a good job, a good life, and an occasional glimpse of the actual sky? It never happens. Even with the best of connections, it’s so unlikely to happen as to be a statistical speck. And Taehyung, one young boy with frankly pretty shaky powers and no strong family history of powers, hardly counted among the best of connections.

No, Taehyung was going to leave, and maybe they’d see him again sometime. Maybe. Perhaps when Jungkook and Jimin dug the basement for his fancy new house, or possibly they could choke on his exhaust when he swooped down to pick up his family and take them away up top.

“Besides,” Taehyung continues. “Can you really say that if it was you, if you suddenly developed a power when no one else in your family had one, and you got admitted to the Academy, you wouldn’t go?”

Jungkook flexes both of his fists down by his sides, fingers curling and loosening several times as he answers. “I couldn’t say, because I know for a fact I’d never go up there to take those tests. I’d never get on their ing charity bus with the rest of the loser hopefuls, going up there to spend a day participating in the whole charade they put on. The way they act like oh, of c