05; Jongdae

"Did you see the lightning? It's going to rain! Quick, shut the windows!"

"Don't worry, it's just Jongdae."

a. Human portable charger

Sometimes, Jongdae wishes he had another power. Don't get him wrong, he's not unhappy with it (in fact, it has proved to be useful more than once) but it gets him in the most unwanted of situations. 

Jongdae's ability is lightning, which sounds cool at first but translates into him being another electrical power outlet to the members. More than once, he has been asked by members to charge their dying phones. At first, he had been quite happy to do so, being ever so helpful, but charging people's phones had an undesirable side effect—it made him lethargic. So he stopped taking phone charging requests. Baekhyun, however, seemed to not be able to remember that. 

"Hey Jongdae," Baekhyun called out as he tossed his phone over to him. "Help me charge my phone, will ya?" They were in the company van, going to a recording schedule for a music show. 

"Serves you right for playing Angry Birds the whole time," Jongdae scoffed. "I can't charge it for you, you know that."

"What?" Baekhyun reeled in shock. "Why not?"

"Unnecessary wastage of my powers make me tired and possibly weirdly charged the whole day. I wouldn't want you to get electrocuted while putting a hand on my shoulder or something," Jongdae explained.

"I know you're afraid of being drained and all, but please, just a little?" Baekhyun pleaded. Apparently, in addition to extremely short-term memory, Baekhyun also has no idea of the meaning of the word no. He pouted. "You're so mean, Jongdae. Can't you just help charge it a little bit? Just 50% or something so it can tide over today."

The other members had quietened down, watching the conversation unfold before them with mild interest. Jongdae was getting a little impatient. What did they think he was, a free charging station?

"If you want me to charge, I'll have to charge," Jongdae announced. The others collectively groaned at the lame pun. 

"Why are you so lame," lamented Chanyeol. "Even my jokes are better than that."

"How much?" Baekhyun asked tentatively. He was willing to pay a bit if it meant Jongdae would charge his phone for him. He didn't expect, however, what came out of Jongdae's mouth afterwards.

"20,000 won." Jongdae stuck out his left hand.

Baekhyun almost choked on his own saliva. "W-What?" he sputtered. Jongdae, thinking he didn't hear the price correctly, repeated. Baekhyun opened his eyes wide, infuriated. His breaths were coming out in short, ragged spurts and he looked like he was about to faint.

"So? Do you want it or not?" Jongdae picked up Baekhyun's Samsung Galaxy S3 and dangled it in front of him, lifting an eyebrow. Baekhyun snatched the phone away. 

"I think I'll just bring a portable charger next time," he muttered.

b. Accidentally electrocuting others

Jongdae likes to think that he has complete and utter control over his power, but unfortunately that is not exactly the case. He has to make a conscious effort to "discharge" himself, to balance all the positive and negative charges in his body after he has used his power, if not he'd electrocute somebody with the static electricity present on the surface of his skin. Thankfully no big harm has been done by his negligence, except the destruction of a few pieces of brand-name clothing, to the utmost dismay of EXO's stylist noonas. 

Back in the dorm afterwards, everyone was trying to relax after the particularly tiring recording session. They were each minding their own business when without warning, all the lights simultaneously turned off, leaving the dorm in total darkness. Jongdae was watching a particularly interesting documentary on the marriage customs of the Tuareg tribe and was not particularly pleased that the television screen turned black right when they were slaughtering a cow. 

"Hey! Who the turned off the lights? Is this some kind of joke?" Kris' angry shouts were heard first.

"I haven't even saved my game of Pokemon yet," Tao said sadly when the screen of his laptop went black. 

"Hello? Somebody's half- and freezing to death here?" Luhan exclaimed from the bathroom. Jongdae squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to think about it. 

"I think it's a power outage," Jongin remarked sagely as he felt his way into the living room. 

"Get the candles!"

"I can use fire to light up the place—"

"Oh my god Chanyeol, don't you dare—"

"Can you guys shut up and turn on the ing lights—"

"Where's Baekhyun when you need him?"

Jongdae promptly decided that, at desperate times like these, it was his duty as the only sane member of EXO to take over the situation. 

"Baekhyun? Your light powers can come in handy now," he called out over the din. 

"Baekhyun-hyung went downstairs to buy a portable charger," Kyungsoo supplied.  

"Oh, I see." Jongdae frowned, remembering the events that occurred earlier in the van. His face fell. Maybe, just maybe, he felt a teeny tiny bit of regret for not charging Baekhyun's phone. But just a little bit. His face lit up again seconds later.

"Do not worry! Everybody, I, Kim Jongdae, will gladly come to your aid. Someone direct me to the electric switchboard; I can use my lightning to power it temporarily."

No one said a word for some time. Then, Junmyeon (or at least, Jongdae thought it was Junmyeon) said, "That's a good idea. Does anyone know where the switchboard is?"

"I'm pretty sure it's here—"

"No idea, hyung—"

"How am I supposed to find it when I can't see anything?" The commotion was back as everyone d around, trying to find the electric switchboard. There was no shortage of groans and yelps and the members bumped into each other. Finally, Minseok spoke up. "I believe it's here."

"Where?" asked Jongdae dumbly. He could only make out the vague direction which Minseok's voice cam from and he most certainly didn't know where he was. 

"Here," Minseok said helpfully. Jongdae slowly made his way over to Minseok's voice. He thought it was lucky that he didn't trip over anything. Yet. Reaching out a tentative hand, he stopped when his fingers hit the warmth of another person's flesh. 

"Is that you, hyung?"

"Yeah," came the reply. Jongdae felt his wrist being encircled by fingers, and his hand was guided to something metallic and cool.

"That's the electric switchboard," said Minseok.

"Okay, great," said Jongdae. "Just step back a bit, so that I can put some electricity into this thing." Jongdae placed his hands on the cool glass, and everyone waited with bated breath. A momentous flash lit up the room, then everything went dark again. Slowly but surely, the lights started flickering on, flooding the dorm in brightness once more. 

"Yes!" Everyone cheered as the lights flickered back to life.

"Thank you hyung!" Sehun ecstatically reached out to hi-five Jongdae. As their palms connected, Jongdae saw the warning bells in his head go off. Uh-oh. Before he could retract his hand, a blinding flash was seen and a sickening crackle was heard. Sehun convulsed a bit and then he crumpled to the floor in a heap. The other members gawked in shock as Jongdae gasped loudly. Sehun had been electrocuted unconscious.

", I forgot, I'm so sorry. I—" he looked around urgently, and his eyes settled on Yixing, who was still blinking unsurely. 

"Yixing-hyung? Could you heal him for me? Please?" 

"Okay..." Yixing walked forward, as if in a trance, and squatted down beside Sehun. He placed both hands on his chest. A white light glowed faintly; within seconds, Sehun started blinking blearily.

"I think you had better discharge yourself before anyone suffers the same fate that I did," Sehun said rather bluntly, getting up with the help of Yixing.

"Oh. Right." 

"Hey guys, I'm back. What did I miss?" Baekhyun chirped as he came in through the front door, shiny new portable charger in hand. He took one look at the mess in the dorm, and winced. "Never mind, forget I asked."

A/N:

This ended up being more electricity than lightning lmao. I abandoned this fic for a long time oops :/ Hope this update makes up for it! And as usual, tell me who you'd want to see in the next chapter! ^^