“Ms. Choi, why are you standing still? No one said you could stop yet. We know you still have more energy to give.” The scientist says to Yena who was heaving hard. She had been supplying electricity to the facility for hours on end and though it was true she still had power coursing through her body, Yena’s eyes were beginning to feel heavy. She was this close to just collapsing and falling asleep on the spot.

“Give me a break… how much more do you even need?” Yena slurs.

“As much as we want. You have no leverage here. Or do you need me to remind you what happens if you don’t comply?” Again, the man brings up a camera feed of Yuri’s cell. She looked like she was in terrible shape. Her eyes were half shut, but appeared to be moving as if she was saying something. Yena couldn’t discern what it was though because of the mask covering .

“No… don’t-” Before Yena can finish her request, the scientist presses a button and Yuri’s body goes limp. Yena’s eyes widened in shock and anger at the man’s heartlessness.

“Just remember, this is your fault, Ms. Choi.” He says with a chuckle.

“YAH! WHEN I GET OUT OF HERE, I SWEAR!” Yena screams. She was absolutely livid right now, her hands crackling with electricity that she fired towards the scientist. Unfortunately, her attack was simply absorbed into the walls like they’ve been the whole time.

“See? That wasn’t so hard, was it? Keep at it, and your friend will live.” The scientist says before leaving the room again.

“What am I going to do…” Yena mumbles, falling onto her knees. That’s when she began to notice something though. As her hands were on the ground, she could feel the slight tingle of electricity flowing through the room.

Huh? Wait a minute… Yena tries absorbing the power herself and was surprised when she began to feel re-energized.

Oh, you messed up big time. She thinks as she starts to siphon all the electricity she’d spent back into her body. It only took a couple minutes before the scientist burst back into the room.

“Yah! What are you doing? The power levels have dropped tremendously!” He says angrily, but when she sees Yena, a feeling of dread rises up within him.

“W-what in the world?” He stammers. Yena was coated in a bright yellow glow and was staring right at him. When she takes a step towards the wall, the man simultaneously takes a step back.

“S-stay back! Your friend’s life is still in my hands!” The scientist tries to threaten, but Yena keeps walking closer.

“Then I guess I’m going to have to take it back into mine.” Yena says before letting out a defiant yell. The power she’d been absorbing is released all at once and the entire room explodes.

When the dust settled, all that was left was Yena standing in the center of the blast zone. The yellow aura around her had faded, but the anger in her eyes was still very much there.

“I’m coming to save you, Yuri.” She says before running down one of the corridors.

~~~~

“You alright, Chae?” Minjoo asks as they make their way down the halls. She’d noticed her girlfriend was a bit jumpier than usual. Every turn they’d make, she’d hide at the back of the line, and when they’d run into a group of soldiers, Chaewon was doing more dodging than hitting. It was as if she was afraid.

“H-huh? Of course I’m fine, Min. Why wouldn’t I be? I’m not worried at all.” Chaewon replies quickly. The way she rushed and stuttered didn’t exactly soothe Minjoo’s worries. Before she could prod further though, Eunbi speaks up from the front.

“Alright, it looks like we’re getting close to where that explosion was.” She says, pointing at the smoke floating in the air from a hall in front of them. Given that Sakura was somewhere here to fix her eyes and she hadn’t written the plan down on paper, Eunbi felt comfortable with removing her blindfold for this part of the mission.

After about a minute more of running, they finally arrive at what they assumed to be Yena’s room, or at least, what was left of it. The whole place was in ruins, broken lab equipment and short-circuited computers strewn around the place. Yena, though, wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

“Girls, spread out and look for clues.” Eunbi suggests as she walks towards the room’s center where it appeared the explosion had emanated from.

“Chae, you think you can split into another copy to cover more ground?” Minjoo asks the short-haired girl who jumped at the sound of a spark going off next to her. Minjoo’s reasoning wasn’t a lie, but she also wanted to see something.

“O-oh… s-sure.” Chaewon replies with a nod before cloning again. This time though, her copy was a lot more energetic.

“C’mon, Min, let’s go! I’m sure we’ll find something around here.” She says cheerfully before grabbing Minjoo’s arm and pulling her away to a corner of the room with a bunch of rubble.

“You notice what’s happening with Chaewon?” Hyewon asks Eunbi while overturning a couple more pieces of debris.

“Yeah, I don’t think Chungha completely fixed her.” Eunbi replies, seeing the first Chaewon clone standing idly in one corner of the room alone. It appeared she was too afraid to touch anything. “We should address it when we get back.”

“Alright, in the meantime, I think I found out where Yuri is, and where Yuri is, Yena won’t be too far.” Hyewon replies while dusting off a clipboard she’d picked up. On it were some charts on Yuri’s condition. In the top right corner, it said lab three.

~~~~

“Clever move, Miyawaki. Took us a while to figure out you were involved in this break-in.” Dr. Han says in an annoyed tone. Sakura had a sarcastic reply ready, but couldn’t exactly say it with gagged. She’d been woken up by a huge explosion a couple minutes ago and dragged to a new room where she was tied up and restrained.

“How did you know Choi Yena and Jo Yuri were in here too? Did you send a signal to Choi on how to break out of her cage?” Han then asks, which causes Sakura’s eyes to widen in surprise.

Yena and Yuri? They’re here too? Sakura thinks to herself in response. She’d just assumed the large explosion she’d heard earlier had been Eunbi’s handiwork.

“Yah, eyes on me! What did you tell your friends?” Han asks again, slapping the Japanese girl across the face to get her attention before removing the cloth covering .

“I… don’t know what you’re talking about.” She wheezes out before the feeling of electricity courses through her.

“Wrong answer.” The scientist says after pressing on a familiar remote. “If you aren’t going to talk, it’s no problem, really. Your schematics have already been looked over and approved. The model five androids will be on the way soon, and if you think destroying this place will make a difference, you’re naive. We have connections everywhere…”

And with that, Dr. Han takes out a pistol from her pocket and points it at Sakura’s forehead. She struggled against her bonds as hard as she could, but the recent electric shock had left her stunned and weakened.

“Your value has run its course.” Han clicks the safety off and prepares to fire. Sakura closes her eyes tightly in response. In her view, things only got this far because of her own ineptitude and hubris. The guilt within her was so heavy, and a part of her thought that maybe this was supposed to be her punishment. This was the end of her road.

After a couple seconds though, instead of the sound of a gun firing, a loud crash fills the room followed by someone screaming.

“Kkura-unnie! We’re here to save you!” The familiar voice of Chaewon says in her ear as she feels her restraints being loosened.

When Sakura opens her eyes, she sees that it was indeed her team from Le Sserafim who had come to her rescue.

“I’m so glad you’re alive, unnie.” Eunchae says before engulfing her in a big hug. The group had been looking around everywhere for anything useful along their path when Kazuha called their attention. She’d been moving quickly through the vents in her air form, and had ended up seeing Sakura and Dr. Han in this room.

“Yah, Chaewon! Help us out with your clone!” Yunjin calls over which breaks the reunion moment they were having.

When Sakura looked over, she noticed one of Chaewon’s copies was being held back by Yunjin and Kazuha. The clone had an angry expression that Chaewon herself didn’t usually have. Following her gaze, Sakura sees Dr. Han unconscious on the ground, parts of her face bruised from being struck repeatedly by the short-haired girl.

“Lemme at her! She tried to kill Kkura!” The copy shouts.

“Oh god, I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with my clones right now.” Chaewon says before walking up to the angry clone and merging back with her.

“You good?” Kazuha asks warily.

“Y-yeah… just a slight headache again.” Chaewon replies, trying to shake off the sudden surge of aggressiveness she felt once she combined back. She’d sensed something was off with her other clones too when she looked through their eyes. One was overly energetic while the other looked very timid. She may have had all her memories back, but there was clearly something wrong with her.

“The scientist will live. Maybe we can take her back to campus with us?” Yunjin’s voice cuts through after examining Dr. Han’s injuries.

“Well, Eunbi-unnie did say to bring back anything useful.” Eunchae replies.

“Wait, I’m going to need a quick recap, girls. What’s Eunbi-unnie’s plan?” Sakura asks, still a bit disoriented from the past couple minutes.

“She’s with Hyewon-unnie, Minjoo and one of my clones looking for Yena-unnie and Yuri. Our job was to find you anything else that was useful.” Chaewon says.

“Alright, I can get into their computer system. We just have to find it.” Sakura tries to move, but stumbles a bit. She may have had some resistance to electricity, but she’d been shocked way more than any normal person should’ve in the past few days.

“Unnie, are you sure you can do it? We can just pull out now that we have you and the scientist.” Eunchae suggests, but Sakura waves her off.

“No, there’s something important I need to retrieve before they wipe it. Now come on.” The older girl says before straightening herself and walking towards the labs. The others have no choice but to follow.

~~~~

Yuri had heard the explosion just like everyone else had. Alarms were ringing and the scientists in the room with her had run off. She was left alone and exhausted from the tests that they’d been running on her. They’ve made her talk, scream, and even sing just to study the vocal tones that could make the average person follow her command. Her voice was hoarse and her jaws were so sore. Yuri didn’t have the energy to scream out for help, not that it would’ve done anything with the mask covering . As she sat in the chair she’d been strapped to for days, her senses began to dull, not even registering the sound of someone running into the room yelling her name.

“Yuri! It’s me! What did they do to you?” The voice says while banging on the glass barrier. After a couple seconds, Yuri hears the crackling of electricity followed by the glass shattering.

Yuri strains her eyes to focus again and just manages to make out the face of Yena. Though, in her dazed state, she wasn’t sure if this was a hallucination or not.

“Come on, Yul, stay with me.” Yena says while undoing her bonds.

“Ye… Yena…?” Yuri tries to ask but it comes out as a whisper, barely audible.

“Yes, Yul. I’m her now. Everything’s going to be okay.” The older girl replies, cupping Yuri’s face into her hands. Yena was just about to pick her up and carry her to safety when an energy blast whizzed by her ear.

Blocking off all the entrances now were what appeared to be teenage boys and girls in school uniforms. Yena knew better though. These were androids.

“Hello there, Yena, is it? I appreciate your aid in powering my facility, but I’m afraid you and your friend can’t leave just yet.” A voice begins to project from one of the speakers overhead.

“Yah! Who the hell are you?” Yena asks, trying to stand in front of Yuri to cover her from any attack.

“Hasn’t your leader informed you of me yet? I run so many companies and can’t even get the respect I deserve.” The voice replies sarcastically.

“Kim Yong-bum? The president of KYB Holdings?” Yena presumes.

“Ah, so my reputation precedes me after all. I’m relieved. Now, back to the matter at hand. You have a unique gift, unlimited power generation. That’s something that’s very valuable to us.”

“It’s nice to be wanted, but I already have a girlfriend. What do you really want?” Yena didn’t like the guy at all, but she needed to keep him talking to figure out what his endgame was.

“Well, as you can see, we’re building androids- ones that can defend the public from the likes of you. Unfortunately, powering them is very costly, and I just hate unnecessary expenses. If you choose to come with us, your girlfriend here will live.” At this, all of the androids show off their energy cannons and aim it right for Yuri.

“Not gonna fall for it. You’ll end up killing her too once I step aside.” Yena says.

“Fine, you’re only delaying the inevitable anyway. Your friend Sakura already completed the modifications for the final android models. You and all your mutant friends will be apprehended and in our control eventually. For now, let’s see if you can handle the model 4s. They’re pretty strong-” Yena shoots a beam of electricity towards the speaker before he can finish the sentence.

“Stay behind me, Yuri.” Yena whispers before all the androids begin rushing towards them.

~~~~

“Hurry! They should be in this next room!” Eunbi says as they turn a corner to find themselves in the middle of a warzone.

“It’s Yena!” Minjoo realizes when she sees a figure bathed in a yellow glow blasting beams of electricity at what they assumed to be androids, and behind her was an unconscious Yuri.

“Hyewon, you and I will help Yena. Chaewon and Minjoo will get Yuri to safety.” Eunbi says before jumping into the fray with a rifle she’d picked up from one of the guards they’d fought on the way here.

“Yah, unnie, come on!” Minjoo says to Chaewon who was frozen in place.

“I-I can’t. What if I get hit by one of those?” She says in a terrified tone.

“Okay, can you at least clone yourself. We kind of need an extra body right now.” Minjoo says with a sigh. Chaewon slowly nods before splitting herself, but this copy wasn’t the energetic one Minjoo had seen earlier.

“Oh my god. Is that Yena-unnie? We have to save her!” The new clone says before charging into the battle headfirst.

“Wait! I was going to cloak us, ugh. Chae, you stay here.” Minjoo says to the first Chaewon before running after the other one.

~~~~

Yena was breathing hard now. She’d been body-blocking Yuri from all the projectile blasts the androids were throwing in their direction. After managing to take out a couple of them, there were still six of them and one of her, not much of a competition.

“Yah! Tin cans! Over here!” A new voice yells before one of the androids is frozen on the spot.

“Hyewon…” Yena realizes with relief when she recognizes her friend. Next to her was Eunbi who began lighting up the androids with bullets.

“We got your back, Yena! Minjoo and Chaewon will take Yuri to safety.” Eunbi says before rolling to dodge an attack. The rifle didn’t seem to be doing much damage, but it was certainly distracting the androids.

Yena nods and turns to see Chaewon trying to take an android one on one, Minjoo nowhere in sight. She couldn’t tell if this was part of the plan or not, but Chaewon looked very outclassed. The short-haired girl was trying to whack the android with a piece of metal she’d picked up off the floor. When Yena looks further though, she sees another Chaewon clone hiding behind a stack of boxes.

“Hey, Yena-unnie-” The duck jumps in surprise when she feels someone tap her shoulder.

“Woah, woah, it’s just me! Minjoo!” The brunette says as she uncloaks herself. “Chaewon’s not exactly in the right headspace right now. I’ll handle Yuri. Just make sure Chaewon doesn’t get herself hurt.”

Before Yena can respond, Minjoo cloaks herself followed by Yuri, leaving her very much confused.

What exactly did I miss? She thinks to herself as she joins the fray.

~~~~

“Here! There’s a couple computers in this next room. Cover me!” Sakura says as she stumbles along. The group had been getting chased by a platoon of soldiers, but a well-timed illusion from Yunjin managed to send them running down a different path.

The tech-girl enters the vacant room and immediately places both hands on the closest PC. There’s a lot of data, but unfortunately, the model five schematics are gone.

“Unnie, hurry up! They found us again!” Kazuha calls before airifying and flying into battle. Eunchae joins as well by summoning her avatar to block incoming bullets. Meanwhile, Chaewon and Yunjin were just trying to keep Dr. Han unconscious.

“It’s not here!” Sakura replies as she looks for something else they could take with them. She sifted through files even more, but because Chuncheon Robotics was just a paper company, there weren’t any direct connections she could find with any other factories aside from KYB. They’d certainly been thorough with their entire plan.

“Uh… who are they?” Yunjin suddenly asks. The soldiers had stopped firing and stepped aside to reveal a young man and woman, both wearing school uniforms.

“Yah, take cover! They’re androids!” Chaewon says as the new arrivals shift their hands into cannons and fire energy blasts their way. Eunchae just manages to shield them in time, but she was clearly more affected by this attack than the regular bullets from earlier.

“Kkura, we’ve gotta go. Like now!” Yunjin calls over to the Japanese girl still attached to the PC in front of her.

Sakura hears the commotion, and is about to disconnect when she sees a file that she would’ve normally overlooked. It was an encrypted file attached to an email about a water product. Given the heavy security on the email and how out of place it was for a company about robotics, she decided to download it. Whatever other important information they needed could be acquired from Dr. Han.

“Alright, I got something. Let’s go girls.” Sakura says.

“Took you long enough. Eunbi-unnie just contacted us to meet at the rendezvous point. They got Yuri and Yena.” Chaewon says before giving her shoulder as support for the Japanese girl.

“Eunchae, Zuha! Come on!” Yunjin calls to the two girls who had just finished their fight. Eunchae’s avatar managed to crush one of the androids into a box while Kazuha managed to oxidize the metal on the other one, leaving it unable to move.

The five girls now begin making their way out, Yunjin’s illusions hiding them from any more confrontations.

 

A/N: Hello and welcome back to another PIZ chapter! 

So, finally, everyone has been rescued and the group can begin cross-referencing all their acquired information. Before that though, it looks like Chaewon's going to need another fix-up, and I think you guys will like what I have planned for that. 

The big battle is on the horizon, and it's going to take everyone at full strength to be able to beat KYB. Also, idk if I've mentioned this before actually, but KYB was actually the other guy who was arrested with Ahn Joon-young irl lol. 

Anyways, this is my last chapter for the year 2023 since I'm busy with new year's stuff for the rest of the weekend, so I just wanted to give a big thank you to everyone who's read this story! I appreciate all the support and will continue to work to be better in 2024. You are all wonderful! Again, the tag for this story is #ProjectIZONE_AU in case anyone wants to say something or post their reactions on twitter.

Happy New Year, Everyone! I'll see you all in 2024!