As Woojin was running between the three different rooms in the hall, Mark contacted JB to tell them he had gotten more information from BTS on the logistics of the operation. JB and Minho decided to go ahead downstairs to the lounge room where Mark had told them to meet him. They told Woojin to have everyone meet down there once they were ready. It's no use explaining the situation when everyone is half asleep, so he told them to go ahead and get completely ready. It was going to be a long day.

Once they made it to the now brightly lit lounge space, Minho saw Mark was sitting on the couch directly in front of the fireplace on a laptop. Above the hollowed, stone structure was a large TV that seemed to be connected to Mark's laptop. Minho moved to sit down in the armchair to the right of the couch since he had been standing ever since leaving the helicopter about an hour prior. As soon as he sat down, he could feel his clothes sticking to him and realized that he was still wearing his workout t-shirt, sweatpants, and jacket from the night before. The idea of a nice shower and a new set of clothes pleasantly passed through his mind.

"You know, Minho, we have time to spare before Chan's team is ready for the briefing. If you want to go clean up, JB can find you some clothes to borrow until we can get you your own," said Mark. Minho suddenly looked up, surprised by how much Mark's comments aligned with his thoughts. "I am a telepath, remember?" he added.

'Oh shoot. That's right, you idiot,' Minho thought only to mentally kick himself when Mark gave him a knowing look. He cleared his throat, hopeful that the older couldn't see that his face was heating up. Not that he needed to see to know.

"A shower would be nice," Minho said to break the awkward silence. 

"If you go down the hall, to the left of the entryway, the first door on the right is the kitchen. The room next to it is supposed to be a bedroom, we use it as a sparring gym. It has its own bathroom attached to it with a shower you are free to use," Mark instructed then he returned to his computer.

Minho nodded and got up to walk towards the room he had described. He passed the kitchen and noticed Jinyoung and Yugyeom were in there already cooking something that smelled like breakfast. Well, really it looked like Jinyoung was doing all the work while Yugyeom was just standing there. Once further down the hall, Minho heard Jinyoung shout something about killing the younger if he didn't start to help out.

He reached the second door and made his way inside. The sudden smell of the sparring mats, punching bags, and sweat reminded him of the back room at the BTS hideout that he had been living out of for the past few months. He shook his head to snap himself out of those reminiscent thoughts, knowing that moving on is something he should be used to by now. He had always moved from space to space, never really able to call any place his home. This academy was probably no different.

Seeing another door at the backside of the room, he walked across the matted floor to the bathroom. Once he had the shower in his sight, he couldn't wait to run some cold water over his tired and aching muscles. However, as soon as he saw his reflection in the mirror he stopped to stare. His light brown, flowy hair was in a complete mess atop his head, there were bags under his eyes because of his lack of sleep, and his complexion was paler than usual. He had always been told his features made him look like a mouse, but he had to admit his current appearance left him looking even more so. 

Minho turned away and started the shower, so the water could warm up slightly. He took his clothes off and entered the shower. He stood under the running water, letting it wash away some of the stress he has had to deal with in the past few hours. It is always best to think about your problems while taking a shower. Soon he snapped out of it, however, and rushed to finish cleaning since they were still in a rush.

When he was done, he used one of the towels that was hanging up to dry off and then wrapped it around his waist. He opened the bathroom door cautiously, guessing JB had left the new clothes out there for him while he was showering. What he didn't expect to see was a younger boy with red, fluffy hair sitting against the opposite wall with clothes in hand.

As soon as he saw Minho emerge from the bathroom, his face spread into the most adorably blinding smile the older had ever seen.

"Hiya! You must be Minho, Woojinnie hyung told me to bring you some clothes since I was the first one ready. I'm kind of the morning person of the group," he said cheerfully as he stood up and walked across the room to hand Minho the clothes.

"Uh, hello... Thank you?" Minho said hesitantly.

"Oh sorry, I should have introduced myself. My name is Jeongin, I'm the youngest member of Chan's team," Jeongin said with a slight bow which Minho returned. "Well, I will see you out in the lounge once you're changed," the younger said as he suddenly headed out of the room.

"S-sure, nice to meet you," Minho called after him, not quite sure what to make out of the short introduction the adorable boy gave him.

He quickly changed into the green hoodie and ripped jeans he had received, then made his way back to the lounge room. When he got there, Minho noticed five new people present in addition to Mark and JB. He first recognized Woojin as the person sitting in the same armchair Minho had flopped down in earlier. On the couch, he saw Jeongin with a new boy he had not met before who was wearing big round-rimmed glasses.

Then in another armchair, opposite the first one, he saw a boy with small features and platinum blonde hair leaning his head onto the shoulder of a dark haired boy. The latter looked even smaller, yet kind of dead inside at first glance. All heads turned his direction when he walked into the room. Minho decided now was as good as any time to make his introductions to the rest of the people he'd be working with.

"Hello," he said as he bowed. "My name is Lee Minho and I look forward to working with all of you on this mission." When he finished he let out a breath, glad he got that over with.

"This actually isn't all of us," Woojin responded and Minho tensed back up again. "But I can introduce you to everyone here. I am assuming you already met Jeongin," he said gesturing toward him. Jeongin waved at him excitedly which caused Minho to uwu a bit. "Next to him is Seungmin. He may look like a puppy, but don't let that fool you. He and Jeongin are both Rank 4s and are both more mischievous than they need to be," after hearing the information about their rank, Minho's view of the cute boys completely changed. For a Gifted to be assigned Rank 4, it meant their gift had the ability to destroy an entire large building, at least. Most of the time 4s weren't allowed to live in cities because the IPBA was scared of the damage they could cause there.

"Then the two lovebirds over there are Changbin and Felix. Felix just joined the academy a few months ago and is originally from Australia, so his Korean is still improving," Woojin continued indicating the light haired boy as Felix and the dark haired boy as Changbin. "Changbin likes to look out for Felix a lot even though Chan is the one who is actually Australian as well. Chan has been living in Korea for a while now, though, and has been at the academy the longest out of all of us. We are just waiting on Jisung, Hyunjin, and Chan, now," but as soon as he spoke, a pale boy with curly blonde hair walked into the room behind Minho.

"What about me?"

"Speak of the devil and he shall appear," the bear-like boy mumbled. "Chan, where are Jisung and Hyunjin?" Woojin asked the newcomer.

"I don't know, I thought they were already down here. Seungmin?" he questioned the younger.

"Why the hell should I know where they are?" Seungmin said with his tone sounding a lot more innocent than the words should allow.

"Well they're your roommates," Changbin said, pointing out the obvious.

"They were still sleeping when I left, and I didn't feel like waking them up. Do you know how hard it is to wake Hyunjin up? Not only is he a deep sleeper, but he also always looks so precious you don't want to disturb him," the boy in glasses singsonged, remembering the sight.

"Well, what about Jisung?" Woojin pressed.

"Why should I care about the squirrel?" his tone immediately changed. "I say we are better off without his awkward jokes."

Chan sighs at the younger boy, "While that may all be true, we still need them here."

"I'll go get them," Felix shouted excitedly in an abnormally deep voice, suddenly sitting up from his position on Changbin's shoulder then disappearing into thin air. Minho did a double take, caught off guard by the boy's sudden disappearance.

Chan turns to face Minho with a wide smile on his face, showing off dimples. "You must be Minho. Woojin told me you will be going on this mission with us. My name is Bang Chan and I am the leader of this team."

"N-nice to meet you. I'm Lee Minho," he said with yet another awkward bow.

"So what is it you're good at, Minho? I'm guessing you can fight?"

"Well yeah, I consider myself a good fighter. I'm only a Rank 2, though, so I have always worked on martial arts."

"We don't judge based on the rank of your gift here. Actually, I'm a Rank 1 myself," Chan reassured with another smile. "So what is your gift?"

"I create force fields which can protect against pretty much anything, and they can also heal anyone inside of one," Minho explains.

The older boy perked up. "You have a healing ability? That is something that can come in very handy to have, especially on a mission like this one where there is bound to be some fighting." Minho was glad to hear Chan found his gift useful. "So, what do you have for us, Mark? We may as well start now 'cause they should be here any second now." Chan went to sit down on the floor in front of the chair Woojin was sitting in, letting his back rest against Woojin's legs. Minho took that as his cue to sit down with the rest of them, so he made his way to the cushioned windowsill just behind Woojin's armchair.

Mark pulled up a powerpoint onto the TV in front of them, and it displayed the faces of three young boys, each with a name and rank labeled underneath. Soobin - Rank 1. Hueningkai - Rank 2. Yeonjun - Rank 5.

***********

Ha, y'all probably thought Jisung was gonna make his appearance but ya gotta wait a few more days for that.

Mwhahaha ; jk love y'all <3

I'm posting this chapter later than I wanted to, but whatcha gonna do when your editor procrastinates all her homework and doesn't have time to edit?
Like mate, stop procrastinating...

In my defense it's still Sunday where I am, so technically I'm still on my schedule.

Q: Are you apart of any other fandoms outside of Kpop? (Gahh, It took me soo long to come up with a good question)

Well, hehe, you see. I may or may not be a bit of an obsessive person when it comes to fandoms so long story short... YES.

Now which ones, you might ask? That would be a lot.

First off, I am a huge anime geek. I was an anime geek before a kpop geek, and then my anime/kpop geek friends corrupted me even further! (cause what are friends for?)

Doctor who is AMAZING. Its literally been three years and I'm still mad at Netflix for removing it. Yes, yes. I know it's on amazon prime, but it's harder to recommend to people when its not on Netflix... everyone be into that Netflix binge.

Marvel universe/DC cartoons. I'm currently rewatching all the Marvel movies with my mom so she (and me cause I am a forgetful hoe) is caught up. I also really like DC cartoons like Justice League, Young Justice, Teen Titans (the ORIGINAL! i refuse to acknowledge that teen titans go exists) but I can't watch the CW shows anymore. I watched them up until like a year ago, meaning I made it pretty gosh darn far, but here's my deal... Arrow should've stopped at 5 seasons (he was only missing for 5 years ya script writers), Flash got SOOOO repetitive, Supergirl is just annoying (like I kid you not, I can go on like a 15 minute rant about just one issue I have with it), and Legends of Tomorrow was okay... BUT HOW THE FRICK CAN YOU KILL MY DUDE SNART and then the show trying to bring him back but minus CRITICAL character development was just not okay. *sighs* alright, I'm done. Needed to get a lot of that off my chest.

So yeah. I'm basically one of the biggest geeks out there. I could probably go on longer but that seems a bit excessive...

Thank you my lovely readers!

~Shadow