"What in the holy...?"

Baekhyun's shout was more than loud enough to wake Chanyeol and Sehun, both of whom immediately shot to attention. Sehun raised the covers to his face as he yawned, and Chanyeol shook his head, then began to finger-comb the messy mop that sat atop it.

And they both noticed something was horribly wrong.

Sehun noticed the missing two feet of leg length. Chanyeol noticed how small his hand felt on his scalp. They both noticed their perspective was much, much lower than it should have been.

Then the three looked at each other.

And screamed murder. Bloody, bloody murder.

"You're— you— both of you—!"

"What the—!"

"You both look like preschoolers!"

All coherent words then left as their shouting devolved into high-pitched screams.

Without realizing it, they'd jumped out of bed to examine each other and themselves. As they looked at each other, they couldn't have been more than three and a half feet tall a piece, with Sehun barely hitting three. Chanyeol took a look in the mirror, seeing a face he could only recall seeing in pictures of himself from around the time he was five years old.

With incredulous faces, a shocked silence fell upon Baekhyun and Chanyeol, and a thoughtful one upon Sehun. His face went from pensive to wide-eyed, and finally took a dark twist into annoyance.

"This was—" 

"Tao! I swear to God that son of a gun is getting my foot up where the sun don't shine!"

They couldn't recognize the pre-pubescent voice in the hallway, but by the threats of violence, they could tell that firstly, it was Chen and secondly, if it was Chen, the threats were as legitimate as Tao was selfless.

"Come on, we have to check on everyone else," Chanyeol said, pausing when he couldn't see the doorknob, realizing a half-second later that it was above his line of sight. "This is so weird," he muttered, as he reached up and flung the door open, before taking one step and stumbling due to the boxers that had dropped from his waist and were now around his ankles. He kicked them off in annoyance before exiting, and they went flying onto his bed, much to the chagrin of Sehun, who was in the line of fire and had to dodge as he was taking off his pajama pants while trying to hold his boxers up. Baekhyun also forwent his shorts, but his boxer briefs were elastic enough to stay loosely put by themselves. The two followed Chanyeol, Baekhyun himself almost tripping over his now oversized t-shirt.

Other doors were opening, as everyone else was already flooding loudly into the hallway.

"Did he really have to go this far?" Kai said to Lay, who was also entering the hallway.

"Seriously, I know we upset him yesterday, but this is a bit too far. Now I'm really glad I talked you guys out of the ghost prank," Lay replied.

"Now I wish you hadn't."

"Where's everyone else?" Chanyeol asked, noticing the doors closer to Tao's room indicated no signs of life behind them. That is, until they heard crying. Baby-like crying, followed by yet another high-pitched shriek.

Wordlessly, the group, led by Lay, slowly opened the door, jaws dropping sequentially as they were able to see inside.

A boy who couldn't have been older than three was staring, dumbfounded at the wailing toddler on the bed.

"S-Suho?"

His panic-filled eyes met theirs. Then he looked back to the baby, who was beginning to calm down. Then them. Then the baby.

"What!?"

Lay tried to remember who was currently sharing a room with Suho, other than Chen. "Suho… Don't tell me that's Xiumin!"

"Chumin!" the chubby little boy said proudly, no hint that whatever had been upsetting him before was still on his mind.

Everyone stood in baffled silence. Then Chanyeol burst into laughter.

"Hyung," he gasped in between convulsions, "You really look like a Baozi!"

The pouty glare Xiumin shot him was more that of an annoyed hamster than a baby.

On the opposite end of the spectrum of Chen's grin, Kai, Lay, and Suho's confusion, and Baekhyun's growing annoyance, was Sehun. Annoyance was an understatement for him at this point. "Tao really needs to learn his lesson," he said through gritted teeth, as he pushed through the others. Lay grabbed his wrist in order to be able to stop him if need be (Sehun wasn't the violent type, but when he did get on a streak of it, he was liable to go overboard.) The others followed.

Tao's world rattled as Sehun slammed the door open so hard, it splintered. "Easy…!" he heard a young boy's voice say. Whose nephew was in the dorm? Being against company policy, family members seldom visited the dorms, and they usually weren't so… loud.

"Zitao!" Sehun yelled, storming into the room followed by Lay and Baekhyun. "Not funny! Hurry up and reverse this now!"

"Yeah, okay, we're sorry for being passive aggressive, but you honestly kind of deserved it," Lay added.

"Speak for yourself. I'm not sorry." Baekhyun yelled, pushing past Lay and leaping on the bed before beginning to repeatedly kick the half-conscious Tao, grunting, "Hey, wake up already!" Chanyeol and Chen shared a devious look before pushing past the others to get in on the fun. They had just reached the bed when Tao, finally fed up enough to overcome the pounding of his congested head, shot up into a sitting position.

"Who’s kicking me!?" he yelled, lashing out and nearly making Baekhyun's head have a very intimate encounter with his fist and the wall. "I swear I'll kill—What the—!?"

He was met with six adorable gazes ranging from curious to hurt to livid, as Suho tried his best to drag the fussy baby Xiumin (who was a good two-thirds of his own height) into the room.

"Uh...?"

"Anything to say for yourself?"  Sehun asked, as if asking for final words before an execution.

"Yeah, who are you?"

A chorus of sighs and tsks came, and several eyes rolled. "I'm Oh Sehun, or the guy who's going to kill you if you don't turn me and the rest of our group back into adults right now."

Tao blinked. It was far too early and his head was filled with far too much snot to think clearly.

"I don't..."

Most of the little mouths in front of Tao began talking and yelling at once. As much as he wanted to close his eyes and go back to sleep instead of facing this ill-timed prank, he forced himself to look at the smaller humans surrounding him. One had an unmistakably sleepy pout, one had ears that curled and stuck out, and the one who had dragged in the baby had his arms folded across his chest and was giving him a fantastically disappointed look. Tao sobered up immediately.

As they started to get louder, feeding off each others' annoyance and Tao's lack of response, said only remaining adult finally took a stab at quieting them.

"Woah, woah, woah, shut up!"

They did, until Tao asked his next question.

"What happened to you guys?"

They all started shouting again, this time more angrily.

"Okay, okay, I get it! I don't know what happened, but I swear, I didn't do this!"

"Yeah, right, how could it not be you?" Chen said. "Who else is running around with the power to do this?"

"I didn't even know he had the power to do this," Kai mused softly.

"I can't." He paused to snort loudly, clearing his nose. "In case you forrgot, I can only control the flow of time and stop other people from being affected by it. I can't even stop it from affecting myself, much less make it affect other people specifically."

The faces around him began to soften, some looking sheepish.

"It doesn't have to be something you can control, just something you can do." Suho said. "Remember when Kai's girlfriend broke up with him, and—"

"What does Kai's ex have to do with anything?" Tao asked, locking eyes with the leader.

"You would know if you didn't cut me off while I'm speaking, but I was going to suggest that it could be related to your stress response. Remember? Kai was depressed, and that Micronesian island Chanyeol was filming on disappeared."

Chanyeol froze, then slowly began to melt to the floor. "Space worms called me oppa… Infinite hell of Gwiyomi… "Law of the Jungle", more like "Break Every Law of Aegyo"…"

"You powers going haywire are the hallmark of a stress response."

The members looked between themselves and began to murmur. A brief but drastic loss of control of one's powers in response to an intense stressor usually specific but not always was common amongst teens and young adults from their home world, but the specificity of the trigger, not to mention what the trigger itself was, was unknown until it happened, and more often than not it had to happen more than once before it was realized. Suho had twice made the electrifying mistake of trying to comfort Chen (whose response to loss was unfortunately not very specific,) once when his friend passed away and again when the old toaster finally broke down for good, and the air around the nervous wreck that was Chanyeol was beginning to feel rather hot. They tried to remember back as best they could, but as far back as they had known each other, Tao, as well as a few of the other members, had never displayed a stress response. It was perfectly reasonable that this could be it.

"I really didn't do it," Tao added again, hoping it would help his case.

Suho sighed. "I guess you didn't mean to, but you still did it. It would be impossible for the rest of us; it's not in the scope of anyone else's powers."

Tao groaned, reached toward his nightstand, grabbing his box of cold medicine. "Oh…" he said, remembering that it was empty. "Hey hyung, do you think you could go… get… me….." his voice trailed off slower as Suho's eyebrows went higher, in anticipation of Tao's idiotic question.

He yelled out in anger, throwing the empty why's manager-hyung getting married this weekend? Couldn't they have waited until I wasn't sick?" Around the room, faces hit palms.

"You self-centered moron," Sehun muttered.

Xiumin, whose hand had ended up in his mouth rather than on his face, looked around at the group, noticing something amiss. "Kuhsoo?" he asked around his thumb, which dripped with saliva.

"Kuh… soo…?" Suho repeated confusedly.

"Kuhsoo!" Xiumin said again.

"I don't… under—"

"Kuh-soo!" Xiumin re-asserted, getting frustrated. He made his way to all fours before propping himself up and toddling out of the door (and nearly tripping over his t-shirt-turned-dress,) once again yelling, "Kuhsoo!" when he got into the hallway.

Suho's small, round face lit up as he realized what Xiumin was trying to say. "He's right: Where is D.O.?"

"He wasn't in our room," Chen said, shrugging.

Worry began to grow on Baekhyun's face. "Tao probably turned him into a fetus at this rate!" Leaving his place by the bed, he went for the door, turning around the much shorter Suho and pushing him out ahead of himself, followed by nearly everyone else. Only Tao and a fidgeting Lay were behind.

"Something up?" Tao asked, only vaguely aware that he should have probably be concerned for his groupmate's life. "Oh, and uh, thanks for the chicken, just... by the way."

"It's nothing. Um…" He shuffled up to Tao, motioning for him to lean down, before whispering in his ear.

"This is the most awkward grocery list ever." Tao sighed as he exited the taxi in front of the closest supermarket. Not being particularly well-stocked, it wasn't one that was frequented by the boys, but unlike the one they usually went to, this one had a kids' clothing store next door. The early time combined with the fact that to his knowledge, no one had followed him promised a quiet trip, at the very least, which was a refreshing thought to keep in mind.

"Okay. Lay said diapers are with the soap and stuff."

Finally finding the aisle, he was presented with brand after size of the absorbent underwear, with no idea where to start.

He sighed. Today was going to be a very long day.