Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN TORCHWOOD OR ANY OF THE CHARACTERS. NOR DO I OWN THE SONGS USED IN THIS STORY. WELL, EXCEPT FOR ONE- BUT I WROTE THAT BY MYSELF ANYWAY. GUESS WHICH ONE IT IS- IT'LL BE USED LATER ON.

SORRY FOR ANY OFFENCE OR WHATEVER CAUSED (IF ANY) BY ANYTHING IN THIS STORY.

PLEASE DO NOT HESITATE TO REVIEW THIS STORY- THE MORE FEEDBACK, THE BETTER I CAN MAKE THE FOLLOWING CHAPTERS.

Good Morning

Gwen woke up with a start, and then she realised exactly where she was and what had happened the previous day. She gave a groan as she swung her legs off the bed and stretched.

"Mornin' doll face!" Said a voice from the other side of the room. Gwen gasped and looked up. Sat across from her on the other bed on the opposite side of the room was a black girl with her hair in a bob, wearing white pyjamas decorated with Winnie the Pooh and his jar of 'hunny'. "My name's Lisa. I'm from London. I woke up about half an hour ago, and it's the school's custom that you wait for your roommate to wake before you shower."

"Huh?" Gwen mumbled, still orientating herself to her surroundings.

"Basically," Lisa explained, calm as a cucumber, "we have to have a tepid shower before we go down for breakfast- that's about the best thing here, by the way, meals being served fourteen hours of the day- it's something about stimulating neural synapses or whatever, and to teach us respect, us with roommates have to wait until said roomies have woken up before we can do anything."

"Oh." Gwen yawned. Suddenly she was on her feet and being dragged towards what she assumed to be the bathroom. "Hey, hey, hey!" She protested, trying to make Lisa let go.

"Oh come on," Lisa turned to her, "you have to shower- school policy. Haven't I mentioned that bit? Anyway, hang around me today- your lessons will be the same as mine for today while you get used to this place. Your timetable will be here tonight before bedtime."

Ianto woke up. Normally, it would be to the sound of traffic and other urban noises. Today, he woke up to bucolic peace. A couple of birds singing, and maybe the sound of a nearby lake. He yawned and stretched, looking around the room. The walls were pristine white, and there were three beds in total- all made from ash wood with plain tan bedding- and all along the same wall, facing the door. He looked around, and saw two other boys. One had dark hair, and was hanging upside down off the edge of the bed. The other was a kid who looked as though he was always giving sarcastic criticism. It was the latter who spoke, albeit in a heavy cockney accent; "You two. Shower. Now." Ianto complied straight away, and the dark-haired boy gave an annoyed grunt. Although Ianto wasn't an expert on dialect, he guessed that this boy was American.

The bathroom wasn't as impressive as Ianto had thought; there were separate cubicles (three- one for each member of the room) and coat hooks screwed to the perfect purple-tiled wall. As he undressed and stepped into the nearest cubicle, Ianto thought himself to be a robot- he did everything he was told, everything he did had a strange mechanic to it and he spoke with an apathetic- or, as his father put it, a computerised- tone to his voice. Although he didn't perform well in his exams at school, he still knew quite a lot, and that was thanks to a gigantic collection of encyclopaedias and archival journals he had collected over the past three years.

A few minutes later...

The dining hall. Some would consider a dining hall to be a place of joy or good humour. Possibly due to the excitement one can boast by starting food fights and taking part in eating competitions. Others- the ones in attendance at boarding schools such as Fire Valley Academy- would not consider the dining hall as fun, rather, they would describe it as; "a dull oak-panelled room big enough to fit a couple of thousands of people, with what may be the only plus to the entire school- food served fourteen hours per day. Even if it is healthy, it's still food." This was how Owen Harper and his- only- friend Lisa Hallett chose to see it.

"Yo, Owe!" A girl's voice called out to the teenage cockney boy. Owen looked over, and saw the coffee-skinned girl waving to him.

"C'mon boys!" He cocked his head over to the table, and Jack and Ianto followed his lead to sit with the dark-skinned girl and her friend. "Jack," Owen gave another head-cock to the American, "and Ianto." He cocked his head to the Welsh boy who was bashfully bowing his head with anxiety. Owen ignored this and asked; "You two, this is Lisa Hallett. Lisa- who's yours?"

"Gwen Cooper," Lisa answered kindly. "And they're not objects on the cattle market. Look- you've made Ianto all self-conscious!" Ianto looked up... and into what had to be the prettiest sight he had seen in the past twenty-four hours. The girl- Lisa- was breathtakingly gorgeous. She had a round face with kind brown eyes. Ianto stuttered a "No- its okay" when he saw her.

"Aw, are you sure, love?" She looked sympathetic, tilting her head slightly to the left. "You look like you're worrying about something."

Owen answered for him. "C'mon, Lis- they're all like that. Everyone in this bloody room was like that when they first got 'ere. Give 'em a week 'n they'll be fine."

"Fine, Owe." Lisa sighed.

"Just out of curiosity," everybody on the table looked at the Jack, the American kid. "Why exactly are we here? No offence to you guys, but it can't be because we're all super-geniuses who can save the world. I mean, the school I was going to before here wasn't exactly the kind where you find prodigies- more like the kind that could spawn tomorrow's bank robber."

Gwen and Lisa giggled. Ianto just smiled, but Owen seemed to be taking Jack's question into serious consideration.

"How can I put it simply?" He mused. "Basically, there's something the governors or whatever for this school have called 'The Potential Ruler'. If they think you've got the potential to do something great but lack the discipline, then you're shipped here to get trained up and whatnot."

That makes sense, Gwen thought. "But what do you two think?" She found herself asking.

"Well," Lisa looked at Owen with a strange look. "Funny enough Owen wrote a song about it the other day." Owen's eyes skyrocketed.

"Er..." He moaned, eyes darting to-and-fro, as though looking for an escape route.

"Wow," Jack muttered, impressed. "A man who can write."

"I wonder if he sings, too." Gwen smiled.

"Oh, he does." Lisa laughed with good humour.

Shit! Owen shouted in his head. He could feel his face heating with the fires of Hell. She's enjoying this! I don't fucking Eve it!

Everyone on the table was staring at him. Amongst the general colloquial chatter of the meagre habitants of the dining hall, he could feel Lisa, Gwen, Ianto and Jack burning him with their eyes to sing his song. Eventually, he gave in.

"Right," he breathed, "I'll sing, but only if you guys promise not to laugh. And if you click your fingers in a steady rhythm- that always helps." Smiling, they began to click their fingers as instructed- in a cool, steady rhythm. Owen felt the urge to stand, as he sang, so that's what he did;

"They're gonna clean up your looks
With all the lies in the books
To make a citizen out of you
Because they sleep with a gun
And keep an eye on you, son
So they can watch all the things you do"

He jumped on top of the table.

"Because the drugs never work
They're gonna give you a smirk
'Cause they got methods of keeping you clean
They're gonna rip up your heads,
Your aspirations to shreds
Another cog in the murder machine

"They said all teenagers scare the living shit out of me
They could care less as long as someone'll bleed
So darken your clothes or strike a violent pose
Maybe they'll leave you alone, but not me

The boys and girls in the clique
The awful names that they stick He looked directly at Gwen
You're never gonna fit in much, kid He looked at Jack
But if you're troubled and hurt He looked at Ianto
What you got under your shirt
Will make them pay for the things that they did"

As he reached the chorus, everyone in the hall seemed to grab the lyrics and joined in with the finger-clicking and clapping:

"They said all teenagers scare the living shit out of me
They could care less as long as someone'll bleed
So darken your clothes or strike a violent pose
Maybe they'll leave you alone, but not me

They said all teenagers scare the living shit out of me
They could care less as long as someone'll bleed
So darken your clothes or strike a violent pose
Maybe they'll leave you alone, but not me!"

"MR. HARPER!" Owen turned and saw The Principal, his sleeked-back grey hair shining with anger in concurrence with his hard hazel eyes. He stood there, proud as ever, in his plain grey suit, shining like an angelic omen in the florescent light of the hall.

Shit. Owen thought. I'm fucked now.

"I think that you, Miss Hallett, Mr. Harkness, Mr. Jones and Miss Cooper had better come with me. Immediately!" He turned on his heel and strode with antagonism towards the double-doors which marked the entrance into what would soon, quite possibly, be an extension of the graveyard.

Owen jumped off the table and shot and apologetic look at the four students who had been sitting with him on the table.

"Hehe," he laughed weakly, "death sentence on the first day. That has to be a record."

"Shut up, Owe." Lisa grumbled, begrudgingly pushing her way past him while the new kids followed her. After a second of watching them guiltily and a groaned "I said sorry!", he finally followed to his doom...