.

Oh .  Jihyo was gonna kill her. Panic washed over Chaeyoung at the thought of being skinned alive at the ripe young age of 18. She most definitely checked. She double checked, even triple checked. How did she miss this, this glaring error in her calculations. The launch date was a week away, there wasn’t any time to fix it. Chaeyoung has spent a good half of the year underground in the hangar working on this spaceship, she guesses that 6 feet under must be where she belongs. She gathered her belongings onto her desk in the corner, telepathically cleaning the workstation behind her - arranging stray nuts and bolts into their place. Papers flew haphazardly across the room only to neatly insert themselves into an methodically organized binder filled with similar looking schematics and reports. After wiping up what visible grease she could find on herself Chaeyoung walked towards the elevator and started her ascension up to the throne room, where she expects she’ll meet her demise.

She takes the time to look over the schematic so that she’s not a fumbling mess when she goes to talk to Jihyo about where she made her mistake. Stupid she mumbles to herself , how could it be a simple math error can become her greatest downfall yet. Three floors before her destination the elevator stops and dings indicating the door opening for another person. Chaeyoung looks up from her binders and sees Mina next to her with an equally frustrated facial expression.

“What’s your problem?” Chaeyoung asks curiously. A frustrated Mina is a rare sight since the girl usually has no trouble getting what she needs (wants).

Mina startled, she hadn’t noticed the shorter girl as her absorbtion of her own thoughts kept her from noticing her surroundings. After taking a half a second to evaluate where she was, elevator, and confirm that the Chaeyoung in front of her was not a hallucination (Chaeyoung had been underground for more than 5 months), Mina spoke.

“Jihyo assigned me the task of finding land for that new Family, told me that with my powers the task should be easy” Mina scoffed, “whatever that means.”  Truth be told, the task had an easy solution, but it also involved potentially upsetting Nayeon and nobody liked dealing with an angry Nayeon.  

The fact that Mina was surprised to see her was apparent to Chaeyoung, but Mina was so engrossed in whatever it was she was thinking about she neglected to ask Chaeyoung about how she was doing. She recalls Sana saying something about the new family, but she never paid much mind to Sana’s gossip. Chaeyoung turned her attention to the numbers overhead, slowly rising then stopping as they reach the residential floor, just below the throne room.  Mina stepped out taking a deep breath and saying something along the lines of ‘see you around’.

“Good luck with your land thingy!” Chaeyoung thinks about doing something for her friend to help her cheer up. But then the elevator doors open and she’s standing in front of the doors to the throne room and she remembers that she’s about to be killed. She starts pacing in front of the doors suddenly very anxious.

“Chaeyoung! I can see you through the door you know.” Jihyo calls out to her in her booming voice. Oh god, Chaeyoung wasn’t ready. She opens the door to the room. There’s been some changes made since she'd last been up here. The floors for one were upgraded from the eyesore marbled pattern to an solid iridescent granite. She also noted the new drapes framing the tall windows and the tapestry which, for some reason, reminded her of sherbert ice cream and lollipops. In the middle of the room sits a large throne and sitting in it, the one thing that hasn’t changed in the room. Chaeyoung is greeted by Jihyo’s welcoming, smiling face. However, after a quick appraisal on Jihyo’s part, said face changes to one of concern once Jihyo senses Chaeyoung’s apprehensions.

“We’ve got a problem.” Chaeyoung started.  She opened up her binders, taking out the ship schematics and laying them out onto Jihyo’s desk. “Umm so, as you can see here the original plan was to have all nine of us board the ship to Earth. But-” she pointed to numbers and figures that only rocket scientist (like herself), and Jihyo could understand. “After some recalculations it seems like the life support system will only be able to withstand a trip carrying five individuals rather than nine” Chaeyoung gulped, her end was near.  The absence of sound so deafening Chaeyoung could only hear blood rushing in her veins.

“So…” Jihyo turned to her. Her stare piercing into Chaeyoung’s soul.

“What you’re saying is that we have a good excuse to leave the annoying ones behind?” Jihyo’s eyes were gleaming.

Chaeyoung hadn’t been expecting this. These must have been a stressful past 6 months for Jihyo if she wanted to get rid of the others this badly. She started back at Jihyo as she continued talking.

“I suppose we’ll have to leave someone responsible behind to keep the others in check, but other than that I think this is perfect. Don’t fret Chae, I don’t think I would have been able to survive intergalactic space travel with Sana and Dahyun flirting the whole way and-” Jihyo’s eye was glowing blue indicating use of her power. “by the looks of things downstairs Nayeon is pissed.”

“Ah~” Chaeyeon nodded, quite frankly she didn’t know how to respond to this unexpected turn of events. She also remembered that Mina was downstairs and could deduce that she was the one Nayeon was probably chewing out. As much as she felt bad for Mina, her own sense of relief flooded her thoughts. Finally, she let out the breath her lungs were acutely aware she was holding.

“So continue stocking the ship with provisions, I’ll gather the family to break the news to them. The launch will commence on schedule.” Jihyo ordered. She was using her leader voice now which caused Chaeyoung to instinctively straighten up. “And Chaeyoung, have you thought of a name for your Space ship?”

“I was thinking the OT9, but I suppose that’s a misnomer now.” Chaeyoung wanted to laugh at the irony.

“The OT9 it is then, Captain Chaeyoung” Jihyo gave Chaeyoung a wide smile.

Chaeyoung liked the sound of that.

a/n~~~

Looks like my initial predictions about the members powers were a bit off :/ but can you blame me when Nayeon, Mina and Jeongyeon were all posing in the same general air manipulating pose with a clock behind them?

Anyways, be sure to stream the M/V!