1. Project IZ*ONE

Prologue

A thin hallway opens up into a vast empty room, dark and gloomy. It's intimidating, as if saying, 'Well, you're in here now, do you have any idea what you just walked into?'. This has been the site of the major 'selections' every year for the past 2 years.

Around 25 years ago, there was a pattern of abnormal births around the world, children born with superhuman abilities. There were always cases earlier, but never to this magnitude. Some saw it as a blessing, others saw it as a curse. These children grew up feeling isolated and alienated from all the "normal" kids. How could they feel safe knowing their classmate could incinerate or freeze them at any given moment? They were mutants. This led to many of these children to grow up to be rebellious and dangerous. They wanted to use their powers to assert their dominance over others for how they were treated in the past. In South Korea, this called for a change. They had to stop the rise in these rogue mutants and it was beginning to be clear that normal artillery wasn't going to cut it. This prompted them to create a facility where they would accept people who were starting to show signs of mutant abilities. They would train them and the best of the best would become a special task force that would defend the country from danger.

Of course, the public was always split on this decision. Thoughts such as "They aren't one of us, how can we trust them?" clash against "It's better to have them on our side". The same public sentiment remained though, mutants are mutants and humans are humans.

The Korean government created a sector which would be in charge of all mutant related activity and the "selection" was born from that. Whether you wanted to or not, people who started to show signs of enhanced abilities were required by law to go to one of the selection institutions or be labeled a rogue. There were private institutes around the country to train and educate mutants to be more aware of their powers and their social responsibilities, but the government mandated them to send their best (read: most dangerous) trainees to the "Produce" institution where they would make the strongest team they could. To make things less complicated for themselves, they segregated it between males and females.

This year was a little different, South Korea and Japan, known to have a tension-filled relationship with one another agreed to an alliance. They would try to form a super group with trainees from both countries. They knew that working together would be for the best for both countries, but neither side ever completely trusted the other. South Korea had little choice over the matter as their past 2 task forces formed had already been retired; too much strain from all the confrontations they had to deal with.

~~~~

"Damn, this place is huge!" Yelled a voice entering the meeting hall for all the trainees. The girl had blonde hair wearing ripped jeans and a yellow shirt with a duck printed on it. She had a curious look in her eyes, as if analyzing everything around her at once, trying to take it all in.

"Jeez, Yena. It's echoing in my ears now. Couldn't you be a little more discreet?" Replies another.

"C'mon Sihyeon, relax. No one else is here yet anyway." The voice, Yena, responds.

"Don't get too excited over there Sparky, let's just go find some nice seats."

"I told you not to call me that, Yiren. Fine, let's go! I'm itching to find out how many people are like us in this world, you know."

Yena had always been curious once she discovered her powers. She'd been playing around the house when she tripped and fell, hitting a lamp which caused a spark that blew out the electricity for the whole block. Her parents were very protective over her since she was young and continued to protect her after they discovered her powers. She was lucky. Many parents openly rejected their children if they were discovered to have powers. They were considered demon-spawn, and not someone they would be bragging about. Yena's parents were the complete opposite. They hid her powers from everyone and tried to pretend nothing happened to not raise suspicion, going so far as trying to convince the neighborhood that the power outage was just some faulty wiring. They treated her the same as they always did and loved her unconditionally. She wanted to do the same for them now that she was older.

The three girls make their way up a long set of steps. They settle in some seats that are near the very top. There were rows upon rows of empty seats below them all waiting to be filled up. Yena's group was the first one in which meant she had the pleasure of seeing everyone come in one by one. What kind of powers would these girls end up having? What kind of personalities will they have?

"Hmm, I wonder who's gonna walk through that door next."

A/N: Welcome to the story! I'm not particularly good at writing intros so the backstory not be written that well, but I hope whoever reads this will stick around for the rest of it; this is after all, just the prologue.
If you want to talk a out this story on twitter, the tag is #ProjectIZONE_AU
Happy reading!