---

 

It all starts when they finally meet their other halves. Or in Kyungsoo and his friends' case, their clones.

 

After circumstances that led to a few of their own getting captured by the Red Force again, the rest of their group willingly let themselves get captured too so that they could rescue the others.

 

Currently, it's the twelfth day of his capture and Kyungsoo's effectively starting to lose it (not that he'd show that to any Red Force goon). As soon as he, Luhan, Yifan, Zitao, Lay, and even Kai got captured, they were put into separate cells with power- cores inside to drain their powers.

 

Every so often, a Red Force soldier patrols by to make sure that he's still there, and sets down a tray of cosmic goop as his nutrition for that cycle. And at first, Kyungsoo harshly refused the offering but after the third day without food, he relented and regretfully took a bite of the goop. In an instant, his hunger and thirst had disappeared and he even felt himself feeling kinda rejuvenated.

 

After trying to use his powers and failing though, his shoulders did sag, but with the addition of energy in him he could finally formulate a plan for escape.

 

Which now will have to be re-formulated because of who he sees standing in front of his cell. It should've been the usual Red Force soldier here at this time but instead, the figure that's on the other side of the quartz-glass looks incredibly (and scarily) like him!

 

Same facial features set in the same way, same height and body...and besides a few cosmetics, the being before him might as well be some kinda long-lost twin. All this time though, his twin has been staring at him with the same blank, dark brown eyes that Kyungsoo has always seen when looking at himself in a mirror first thing in the morning.

 

Then, suddenly his twin smirks and a scar in the shape of a smile-line curls along the left edge of their lips, effectively making them look more like Gywnplaine, the man who smiles.

 

Kyungsoo feels his blood run cold at that excited smirk and just stares as his twin's thick eyebrows with slits in them then lift like a predator taunting their prey. Then, his twin suddenly produces a key for the cell's lock and Kyungsoo shoots up from his seat in confusion as he watches them open it and push the quartz-glass door aside.

 

"Mind if I come in?" they ask, in a tone so similar to Kyungsoo's own but more monotonous.

 

With his breathing picking up a bit as they enter without another response, Kyungsoo responds back, "Who are you? And--and why do you look like me?"

 

His twin closes the door behind themself while still smirking at him, and Kyungsoo suddenly wonders as he in his lips with worry if his other friends have twins too.

 

"Honestly," his twin replies, now standing in front of him. "D.O., don't you think that I should be asking you the same thing?"

 

"...Uhh, I actually don't go by D.O. anymore," Kyungsoo responds.

 

And that evil smirk on his twin's face dissipates as quickly as it showed up as they frown at him with furrowed eyebrows. Kyungsoo honestly gets taken aback, because he already assumed that his twin would only have like two default expressions, empty and evil.

 

"Wait, what?" his twin asks, incredulously. "You've changed our name?"

 

"Our name?"

 

Now his twin's expression turns to one of anger, their eyes wider and more intense. Somehow, even though Kyungsoo's supposed to be scared, he's only thinking about how dramatic that expression must've looked when he's used it on his friends a various amount of times.

 

"Don't play dumb."

 

Kyungsoo quickly focuses back on the present and his evil twin as he notices the latter taking another step closer to him. His stomach lurches and he instantly takes a step back.

 

"Your Earth-chosen name has always been D.O. which I know because that's the name equivalent that I was born with," his evil twin continues. "That is--or I guess was--our name."

 

So many questions run through Kyungsoo's mind at that, wondering why this matters so much to his twin, how they were born with the same name, if they're one of the Red Force's lapdogs, and why they decided to stay here.

 

Suddenly, his evil twin lets out a harsh sigh and runs a hand through their spiky black hair. "Alright, what do you go by now because I will have to tell my masters about this name change."

 

"Your masters? D'ya mean the red force?"

 

"Stop with the rhetorical questions," his evil twin says, seeming to get angrier.

 

And now, Kyungsoo's the one who smirks. "And if I don't?"

 

In the blink of an eye, his evil twin lurches towards him with outstretched hands, but Kyungsoo quickly dodges out of the way before his neck can be grabbed to choke. His evil twin then lets out an annoyed grunt through their nose and makes a fist to punch him, and though Kyungsoo may not have all of his strength, by the look of the punch's force, he should still be able to absorb its impact.

 

So, he captures the fist and then the subsequent one aimed for his face and then looks at his evil twin before getting taken aback. Because gone is the angry glare and flared nostrils, and in its place is an expression of both wonder and something else that he can't quite place.

 

Both of them are panting a bit now, and Kyungsoo fully expects for his twin to try punching him again but gets further surprised when they break away from his grip and let their arms drop back down to their sides.

 

"How...how did you do that?" his twin then asks. "You should be completely drained of your powers right now."

 

Kyungsoo's eyes shift in confusion. "Uhhh? Honestly, I'm pretty surprised myself."

 

And this time, his twin's shoulders sag as they look to the side and seem to contemplate something. And seeing as how they're basically him but not, Kyungsoo can tell that they're definitely overthinking about what's going on right now too. He almost wants to reach out and place a hand on his twin's shoulder like Kai tends to do when he gets like this, before his stomach lurches again at the thought of Kai and how he is, and if he's alright.

 

"No, no, your Kai is alright," his twin then says, looking up at him again with furrowed eyebrows.

 

Kyungsoo's own eyebrows raise. ", can you read my--"

 

"No, I can just tell by your expression. I am based off of you, remember?"

 

They then put a hand to cup one of their cheeks as they surprisingly start pacing around the cell, muttering and cursing to themself. And though they're not actually Kyungsoo, he definitely is reminded of himself because he's absolutely done the same thing before during a mental breakdown.

 

"Uhh, D.O.?" he calls out and his twin looks up.

 

"...It's D.Ø."

 

"Dee-oe?"

 

"Close enough."

 

Kyungsoo then cautiously moves closer to his twin before stopping when D.Ø. snarls at him. "D.Ø., what--what is all of this for, huh? Why are you here? Why were you made? What--"

 

And at that, D.Ø. lets out a soft, sad-sounding chuckle. "What? Are you trying to sympathize with me now?"

 

"I just...I wanna make sense of things. Wanna make things right somehow."

 

"But you can't make it right though. None of you originals can. You think that we didn't try to escape once we were made? We have your memories, your wants, your desires, your frustrations, your fears...But, we've all been, or well we were supposed to all be--"

 

Suddenly, D.Ø. in his lips and his eyes go wide for a second. And Kyungsoo starts getting incredibly anxious just by looking at his twin's now terrified expression. There must be something that he can't say without getting punished by the Red Force.

 

Abruptly, D.Ø.'s terrified eyes go wild as he smirks again and then comes closer. "Ha-ha...Ya know...you almost had me there, D.O., but I--"

 

"Name's not D.O. anymore, remember?" Kyungsoo says, even as he gets backed up into the wall beside his cot.

 

"Whatever your name is!" D.Ø. replies, eyes still wild. "Don't try to sneak your way into my brain or try to convince me to stop when I tear you limb from limb like the little worm that you are!"

 

And before Kyungsoo can even come up with a snarky response, D.Ø. lunges for his throat again, wraps his hands around it and squeezes. And if Kyungsoo had his full powers he'd be able to resist even being grabbed, but with his diminished amount, he can only grab for his twin's hands and squeeze back to try and pry them off of his throat.

 

D.Ø. just chuckles and squeezes harder before lifting him up against the wall, and Kyungsoo starts choking as he gasps for air, his legs kicking to try and hit D.Ø.'s chest to no avail. And the longer that D.Ø. squeezes, the more that Kyungsoo wheezes and tears start rolling down his cheeks as he mentally begs for his twin to stop.

 

Then, just like that, Kyungsoo loses consciousness.

 

---

 

When he comes to, he finds himself lying against the wall and quickly pushes himself up when he scans the room and sees that D.Ø. is gone. His head then pounds as a result of getting up too quick and he places a hand on his forehead and then around his throat.

 

Surprisingly, his throat isn't pained anymore, almost as if it never happened, but Kyungsoo knows that no nightmare is realistic enough to produce the scuff-marks on the ground from when D.Ø. was pacing around earlier in his combat boots.

 

For some unknown reason, Kyungsoo gets the feeling that that won't be the last time that he sees his evil twin. And so whenever that next time comes, he'll definitely have to be more prepared.

 

-------

 

Meanwhile, KĀI is making his way towards his original's cell and is practically vibrating with excitement at the thought of meeting his once-powerful pseudo-brother.

 

From the briefings that he's had with some of the movers and shakers in the Red Force family, his original has always been one of the toughest ones to capture. When porting solo, he could teleport anywhere on the planet in the blink of an eye, for hours or days if it really came down to it.

 

So, to combat that, the Red Force had added a little power boost to KĀI himself when he was first created. So, instead of just porting anywhere on a given planet, he's been blessed with the ability to port himself (and another) to an alternate mirror dimension if he so chooses.

 

And boy, did he love doing that at first. When he desired some alone time from his friends and even his hon D.Ø., KĀI would port to that dimension and it was like all of his worries would disappear for that short period of time. Unfortunately, the more that KĀI ported to that dimension, the more that the cracking of space and time caused his own mind to crack just a little too.

 

After his friends noticed, they begged him to never use that ability addition unless absolutely necessary, and KĀI not wanting to lose his only friends or himself, readily agreed.

 

But with those tiny tears in his psyche, the original directive given to him and his friends easily seeps into his mind in the most obsessive way now. More repetitive than it is for the others too. So, now that he's about to come face to face with his original, he's practically salivating at the thought of getting that directive completed and thus out of his mind forever.

 

It takes walking past a few more white, empty cells before he finally reaches cell number 0088, and with an excited grin he peers through the quartz-glass to see his original before his grin twists to a scowl.

 

Of course, even at a time like this, his original is just fast asleep in his prisoner's garb, curled up into a ball like a pathetic baby. With a roll of his eyes and a sigh, KĀI unlocks the cell door and makes his way inside, closing the door behind himself and heading towards his original's cot.

 

When he's face to face with his slumbering original though, he pauses. At first, he was gonna just kick him awake, maybe stab him a little in the face to make a point, but...his original really is who he was based off of.

 

Every feature looks exactly like his own, and he even has his hair dyed a dark-green like KĀI's (or well, the opposite) with his bangs and hair currently sticking up everywhere like a bird's nest. His original looks so peaceful like this somehow too, even with the dire situation that he's in as he strives to rescue his friends...KĀI understands all of that with the memories implanted in him from his birth.

 

And so, he doesn't even have to wonder about how his original's managed to even sleep like this. Because somewhere, deep, deep down in his original's heart, there must still be some hope that everything will turn out alright. KĀI then takes a step back from the cot when he realizes that it's the same for himself.

 

And the more that he looks at his original, the duller that the directive gets in his mind somehow and the more that the cracks in his psyche seem to magically repair themselves. So, going against his initial plan to kill his original, KĀI instead decides to stay in the cell for a bit, and sits against the foot of the cot with his legs pulled up to his chest and his head tilted up as he looks up at the cell's ceiling to think.

 

-------

 

The sounds of roaring winds suddenly jolts Kai out of his sleep and with wide eyes, he quickly gets up and rushes to the cell's door. Red lights are flashing brightly and rapidly on the other side while a strange whooshing sound blares around in what he realizes is an alarm.

 

"."

 

Instantly, Kai whips his head to look behind himself at that before he jumps when he spots someone who looks (and sounded) suspiciously like him at the edge of his cot. The person then slowly pushes themself up and groans as they stretch and twist their waist for a second before they make eye contact with him and just stare.

 

And besides their hazy, white and blue irises and the deep redness around their eyes (and their bright yellow leather jacket and--), this person looks like the splitting image of Kai. Almost like he's looking into a mirror.

 

"W-who--?" he starts before the person cuts him off.

 

"No time for that!" they exclaim before they rush to him and grab his right wrist. Kai yelps and tries to let go but their hold on him is too ing tight.

 

His splitting image then quickly unlocks the cell door with a key before they drag him out and both of them squint as the red lights seem even brighter on this side of the cell. Then, his splitting image whips their head left then right before they rush off to the right and drag him along with him.

 

"Who are you?!" Kai manages to yell as they run past numerous empty cells and then turn a corner to run some more.

 

"I'm you, !" his splitting image yells back before they soon turn another corner. Behind them, Kai can vaguely hear the sound of pounding footsteps chasing after them but doesn't dare turn his head. "Name's KĀI, just like yours!"

 

Obviously, none of this is making sense to Kai and so he ends up asking KĀI more questions, like what's going on, why this and why that, and KĀI ends up telling him to just shut up and run.

 

So, after a bit of stubbornness, Kai relents and does just that before the cell-doors they pass by suddenly start swinging open and KĀI yells out a Yes! and tells him to hold on. Then, with wide eyes, Kai feels himself getting ported to a new location (and feels that sense of grief appear again at the lack of his own teleporting power).

 

Now instead of the holding cells, they seem to be at a quiet, abandoned warehouse of sorts, with paint peeling off of the walls and floors, and only weak-looking support beams around the two of them. (It's definitely more characteristic than the all-white holding cells though, that's for sure.)

 

Suddenly, KĀI drops to a squat, not from fatigue though but from what Kai instantly recognizes is fear and worry. He'd know because he's worn that expression numerous times ever since he and his friends first got captured by the Red Force.

 

So, he ends up bending down to a squat too, though more carefully as to not hurt his sensitive back, and just looks at KĀI as the latter keeps his head down and ruffles his own hair.