when yebin saw the sky go dark, she knew siyeon was upset. and that usually meant that something had not gone according to plan.

the second-youngest was very predictable with her emotions. when the sun was shining, yebin knew she was happy. when it was raining, she was in one of her moods. when it was freezing, she was annoyed. yebin was never able to figure out if she altered the weather to fit her feelings consciously or not, but regardless, they were always a good indication of how to act around her.

but this time, the darkened sky made yebin’s heart thrum a little faster in her chest. if she was upset now, that meant something went wrong on their mission. yebin’s mind could come up with a million things that might have gone wrong, and none of them were particularly hopeful.

she made eye contact with yewon, who was sitting across the room reading a book and definitely knew where yebin’s mind had gone. she always did – being around yewon and her telepathy always made her a little wary, but it was nice not having to voice her thoughts aloud and still being understood. they both stood up together, yewon flattening her book open on the side table, and went to meet the returning girls at the front door.

siyeon looked downright furious, but none of them looked hurt. that was definitely a positive.

“what happened?” yebin asked, her eyes still scanning the five girls in the foyer of their home for any sign of injury.

the ten of them lived in a house several miles outside the city, basically in the middle of nowhere. it was huge, and it was perfectly isolated to act as their home base. no one knew where it was located except for the people living there, which only added up to about one hundred in total. the place was easily big enough to fit twice that amount, but yebin liked it for that. even with the huge number of roommates, she still had her own space. and the ten of them tended to isolate themselves from the rest of the group as a whole. they were the reason everyone was gathered, anyway. their powers. their cause.

“no one was there,” nayoung explained quickly, looking as if her mind was already working a million miles an hour. “they knew we were coming.”

“someone must have tipped them off,” siyeon pointed out, her voice full of fire.

yebin leaned against the wall and watched them take their shoes off, her eyebrows drawn together. if they had a rat in their organization, that could be catastrophic for them. they couldn’t afford information leaking to the other side. at the same time, however, she was more than a little relieved that nothing world-shattering had happened. no one was actually hurt. things could have gone a lot worse.

nayoung set her shoes by the door in the entryway and stepped out of the foyer, her eyes searching out yewon immediately.

“is sungyeon in her room?” she asked. yewon nodded and followed nayoung up the stairs in search of their resident technopath.

the other girls followed suit, lining up their shoes and taking off their jackets before disappearing in different directions. they all had their own work to do and things they needed to have done before dinner. they couldn’t afford to stop and worry, even if there was a rat leaking information.

yebin followed minkyung down the front hallway into the lounge, jogging for a second to catch up to the taller’s pace.

“hey,” she said, falling in step beside the other girl. “what happened out there?”

“nothing,” minkyung replied, glancing at yebin and giving a small sigh. “we got there and the place was empty. we could have just walked right in and no one would have stopped us.”

“i can’t believe we did all that work and it was a total bust,” siyeon complained, stomping through the room, her footsteps reverberating against the walls.

“keep your voice down,” minkyung warned, taking a seat on the lounge’s couch. yebin sat next to her and reached over to take her hand and lace their fingers together, though they both kept their attention on siyeon. “we don’t know who’s listening anymore.”

“if there’s a spy listening right now, they can kiss my ,” siyeon grumbled before disappearing through the doorway to the kitchen

with siyeon gone, yebin turned to minkyung and lowered her voice. “you really think there’s someone giving them information about us?” she asked.

minkyung hesitated for a second before shrugging. “i don’t know. but it’s way too good of a coincidence that no one was around the same time we showed up.”

“what are we going to do?”

something in yebin’s voice must have tipped minkyung off, because she immediately dropped the indifferent tone in her voice and pulled yebin closer. yebin leaned against minkyung’s side, enjoying her warmth. the older girl was always strangely warm – her power showing itself even when she wasn’t using it. yebin had only seen her actually manipulate fire a handful of times. she liked this side of it a lot more. her heat was oddly comforting, and yebin loved being close to her.

“nayoung mentioned something about trying to figure out who it was before they realize we’re onto them,” she said. yebin leaned her head against minkyung’s shoulder as she spoke. “it could be anyone, though. i don’t think we can trust anyone outside of the ten of us.”

her voice was low and somehow soothing, despite the terrifying thoughts she was admitting. for the most part, yebin only interacted with the other girls anyway, but the idea that she couldn’t trust anyone else was slightly frightening. she tightened her grip around minkyung’s hand, keeping quiet for a minute.

every time minkyung left to go scouting or to participate in a guerilla attack they had planned, yebin couldn’t do anything but stay at home and keep herself busy. her power wasn’t useful out there – she couldn’t use it to protect herself in the end. she’d been training in combat for years now, but compared to the other girls – kyla with her telekinesis, minkyung with her fire manipulation – she was at a steep disadvantage.

and yebin didn’t mind that, most of the time. there was plenty to do around the mansion, plenty of things that needed to be done to keep the organization running. she could keep sungyeon company while she hacked government computers or run errands throughout the building from one department to the next. she never liked confrontation anyway.

but now minkyung was suggesting even the mansion might not be safe. there was someone deliberately trying to harm them living right underneath their noses. yebin had probably delivered a message to them in the last few days, even. she knew everyone in the building in passing, but she hardly remembered their names outside of what department they worked for and where to find them to pass along a message. one of the people she made small talk with probably wanted her dead.

they were only sitting in silence for a few minutes when the loudest noise yebin had ever heard completely disrupted their moment. they both shot up, yebin almost knocking her head against minkyung’s jaw. siyeon appeared in the doorway again, her eyes wide.

the explosion rocked the entire building, the ground trembling beneath yebin’s feet. in another room, in another part of the mansion, someone screamed. for a few long seconds, no one reacted. yebin’s knuckles were white against minkyung’s, her heart pounding deafening in the silence that followed the initial blast.

“yebin!” someone yelled from the direction of the explosion, and the spell was broken.

yebin moved immediately, her mind struggling to catch up as she moved on instinct, her fingers falling out of minkyung’s as she ran in the direction of the sound. minkyung called her name, and she heard footsteps following her down the hall, but yebin was focused on where she was going.

she reached a room filled with dust and her eyes began watering immediately as she strained to see through the rubble. something was burning. there were books strewn all over the floor. shards of glass glittered dangerously from where the windows had shattered inwards with the force of the blast.  

and sunlight, filtered through the destruction where there definitely hadn’t been sunlight before. an entire wall was missing.

in the center of the library, surrounded by rubble and books, a group of girls were gathered in a protective circle. nayoung had reached the scene first, unsurprisingly, with kyulkyung and kyla at her side. kyungwon was sitting on the floor, eunwoo’s head in her lap. she wasn’t moving, and yebin could see the blood matting the girl’s hair.

yebin rushed forward, falling immediately to her knees beside kyungwon. the older girl’s eyes were wide with worry, her hands stained with blood, but she visibly relaxed a little when she saw yebin.

“what’s going on?” she heard minkyung ask nayoung, but her attention was focused on eunwoo before she could hear nayoung’s response.

she had been hit pretty hard – the back of her head was coated in thick blood. she was completely unconscious, but yebin could easily tell she was still breathing. which was good. yebin could work with breathing.

kyungwon was silent as yebin started to work, her hands glowing slightly as she placed them over eunwoo’s wounds. she could feel them start to heal under her fingertips, the skin stitching itself back together and the blood flowing naturally back where it was supposed to.

“come on, we have to make sure there’s no one still out there,” she heard nayoung’s voice, but it sounded like it was coming from far away, like she was underwater.

she felt a hand on her shoulder, and she looked up quickly to see minkyung glancing between her and eunwoo. she could see the mix of worry and anger on her face, and she knew minkyung was itching to find whoever did this to their home.

“go,” yebin said simply, the glow in her fingertips dying a bit as she lost concentration. “kick their asses for me.”

minkyung looked hesitant, but she nodded and leaned down to press a quick kiss to yebin’s hair before turning and running after nayoung out the gaping hole in the wall. yebin noticed kyungwon’s eyes following her, and she shifted around to pull eunwoo’s limp body onto her own.

“go help them,” she told her. “they need it. i got her.”

kyungwon looked grateful and stumbled to her feet. yebin focused her attention back on eunwoo, her hands glowing brighter as she began healing her again.

the head wound was the worst of her injuries, though yebin noticed there were a few small fractures in several of her bones. she must have been sitting close to the wall when it exploded, she figured. if that was the case, she was lucky to be getting out mostly unharmed.

yebin poured over her injuries for what felt like forever. it was probably only a few minutes, but by the time she’d fixed every break and healed every wound, she felt like she was going to collapse from exhaustion. healing other people always took a lot out of her, but she felt much better when eunwoo’s breathing steadied and her eyelids began to flutter.

“,” she groaned emphatically, moving slowly. yebin let go of her, shifting around so she was sitting cross-legged and propping her head up against her hand.

“thanks for rejoining the living,” she said, her eyelids drooping slightly. “there’s nothing i can do about the blood, though.”

eunwoo sat up on her own, her fingers running through the mess of blood in her hair before she glanced at yebin. “what happened?” she asked.

yebin shrugged. now that eunwoo was awake, she could actually look around the room and process the damage done. the dust had cleared from the air, leaving late afternoon sunlight streaming easily through the missing wall. there were chunks of stone and wood scattered around the room, and most of the bookshelves had collapsed in a mess of paper and leather binding.

through the hole in the wall, she could see across the field to the edge of the forest. it was a huge expanse of land, and she found it hard to believe that anyone could have sneaked up on the building to plant the bomb without someone seeing them.

“eunwoo! are you okay?” someone exclaimed, and the other eight girls filed into the room.

“of course she is. i’m here,” yebin said pointedly as they gathered around. they all had matching looks of worry and anger, the same one she’d seen on minkyung before she’d left to find the culprit.

“no luck?” she guessed, looking up at nayoung. nayoung shook her head. she had that face again, like she was thinking faster than the speed of light. her power had nothing to do with brains, but that was definitely the reason she was their leader. yebin didn’t doubt that she’d be the one to figure it out first. she was always one step ahead.

“nobody saw anyone outside before it happened,” nayoung said.

“so it was someone inside?” eunwoo asked.

yebin glanced up at the girls around her, her heart racing again. there was no way someone could have sneaked up on the mansion without someone seeing them, or escaped again. they knew they had a rat, but now yebin was sure that person was doing much more than sending information to the other side.  they had tried to kill eunwoo.

not even their own home base was safe anymore. someone here wanted them dead, and there was no way to figure out who without alienating everyone. if things had been slightly different, eunwoo could have died. whoever the rat was, they wanted to kill them. there was no turning back now – this was about to get serious.

suddenly yebin wasn’t tired anymore.

alternately titled: an exploration into lowercase stories because usually it's impossible for me to write without capital letters.

also this is giving me xmen vibes but i've never seen a single xmen movie so???? if it is similar it's not intentional??? idek at this point i'm super sleep-deprived