we’re ready to make you one of us.

[headandhand]

WHO: Open to all Dualizens
WHAT: When Roboclones Attack
WHERE: Anywhere in the city!
WHEN: The night of Oct. 19
WARNINGS: Please use these if applicable! And if you happen to end up dead by roboclone, please fill out the death form!

It’s an ordinary night in Dualis, until it suddenly becomes a very dark and stormy night in Dualis. There hasn’t been a single day of unpleasant weather since any of you arrived, but soon after the sun begins to sink behind the city’s skyscrapers and the neon lights intensify for the night, storm clouds begin to gather overhead and unleash a cacophony of thunder, a deluge of rain, and brilliant spikes of lightning arcing across the sky.

It’s a violent storm, to be sure, but surely severe weather is no challenge in such a technologically advanced city as Dualis, right? As long as you stay indoors, you can keep safe and dry until the storm passes.

Except … less than an hour after the storm begins, the power all across the city goes completely out. All buildings are dark except for the illumination cast by lightning across brick and steel and glass. All electronics - including phones - are dead, all biometric locks are disabled, and no attempts to call, text, or reach the internet or the network succeed. Eerily, the streets are silent and empty.

Under normal circumstances, such a widespread blackout would merely be odd and inconvenient, but tonight, circumstances are anything but normal. About half an hour after the blackout begins, something approaches you, wherever you are. In the dark, you’ll be able to make out that its shape is humanoid, but maybe its motions are jerky and mechanical. As it draws closer and you get a better look, by candlelight or flashlight or flash of lightning, you recognize the face staring back at you.

That face is your own.

The face, like the rest of the body, is likely some degree of incomplete, an incongruous jigsaw of metal and flesh, but it’s definitely yours. And this machine doppelganger’s mission is soon made apparent as it launches a targeted attack on you:

It’s here to kill you.

After nearly four hours, the storm subsides and the power is restored and the city falls back into its normal rhythm. Will you survive until then?

May the odds be ever in your favor, friends.

Comments

Drifter | Destiny

[be_notorious]

1.) The Blackout - OTA

Drifter is rarely home. He just doesn't trust people enough to sleep comfortably around them. He keeps some things there; his clothes, a small stockpile of food, some odds and ends, random gadgets purchased from second-hand stores. But hardly anything that a personal detail could be gleaned from.

It's while he's there, in the middle of quickly changing into a new outfit and buttoning up his vest, that the lights flicker dark.

Drifter pauses in the middle of pushing a decorative peg through a loop of the changshan styled vest, gaze shifting in the dark.

"Stay put," he says as a quick warning, quietly, to something unseen. He doesn't want it to show itself. "I got this."

And he holds up a jade coin of his, letting it flicker with flames originating from the glowing tips of his fingers. It lights up the room with all the enthusiasm of a zippo, but he's worked with worse. This is fine. He just has to find a way out.

He enters the halls using the coin as a 'light' for now, fingertips still faintly glowing without the Lightbearer protective gloves he's accustomed to wearing. At least anyone that he catches will have an easy light to head down the stairs, but he's like everyone else in not knowing something is coming.

2.) Raw Materials - OTA

Still dark out. There's a body laying on the street. One of the duplicates, he realizes. Piss poor things, aren't they? Lost this fight, obviously. Blood and meat peeled back from messy metal and lights. Limbs skewed in unusual ways. Hard hitter, whoever did this. Something to be admired,

Drifter stands over it and produces a knife, plants it in the thing's metal cranium, and with surprising strength forces open a piece of metal. There we go, a ton of relays. New wires that are sensitive enough to carry data from organic material. Substantial data repository.

He can dig it.

He puts his hands under the armpits and starts dragging it away to be disassembled as quickly as he can. If there are any trackers in here, he needs to strip the parts he needs and leave it on the tracks to be trashed by the first train that comes by when the power comes back on.

this is a material world

[soundspeed]

[ah yes, a city under attack by robots. it’s almost as if pietro never left sokovia, except the robots here are a little less obvious than ultron’s army. even so, encountering something partly metal with most of his own face had tipped pietro off that something was not right, and when the mechanical double had lunged for his throat, pietro knew this had to be a bad situation all around.

he’d left his own double a bloody heap of metal encased in flesh and sped out to the rest of the city to save whoever needed saving. drifter seems to have a handle on everything, but as pietro zips by in a blur of blue and white, something about this scene doesn’t seem entirely right, so he stops.]

What are you doing?

Blackout (I'm late to the party so def feel free to ignore/not reply if you don't wanna)

[whosthemonsternow]

South is fresh from a fight when she sees a glowing light around the corner and down the hall from her. She has a still bleeding nose and a swollen black-eye, jacket torn and untucked tank top smeared with blood and god only knows what from the fake-South.

She's technically unarmed, no weapons anyways. But her bruised and bloodied knuckles should count as a weapon, knees and boots too. Her jeans are stained, her knee might be bleeding from a few good hits to a metal head, she's a mess and fired up to rip apart whatever the hell is glowing now.

Staying quiet, South hugs to the wall, tucked just around the corner and waiting to see if this is a person or another fake-her, maybe a fake someone else? She doesn't know what the fuck is going on, but with teeth gritted and fists held tight, she's ready.

[sociallychallenged]

1.) Trying to Kill Yourself (CW: Suicide Discussion) - Closed to Connor

Hank never thought he'd see a robot dog chase a laser pointer, but Maggie is into it. He's sitting there on his bed, lazily trailing the laser pointer over things, and the artificial Doberman is doing her very, very best to get it. He really hopes he can bring her home. Maybe she can breathe some new life into an old dog like Sumo.

The lights go dark so there's only that pinpoint red light. Maggie 'catches' it then, and it reflects off the fur on her face brightly, a pinpoint on a dark muzzle much brighter in the suddenly dim room.

Hank turns it off, leaving a tiny green spot in his vision and looking for a familiar blue light (or yellow, or red depending on his mood) in the darkness.

"What the fuck. Connor, there's a flashlight in my lower left-hand drawer, can you get it for me?" He starts searching for the gun he came in with, immediately unsettled because of the sheer ferocity of the silence. Things didn't go that quiet. He'd fear an EMP, but Maggie's still moving. Connor's not fucking dead in the water. This is something else.

He probably should have considered, maybe, that he had left that revolver in the same drawer as his heavy metal flashlight. Currently no bullets in any of the chambers, but what it represents in context? Undeniable.

2. An Ax to Grind) - OTA

Hank goes to the police station, hoping to get a weapon. There's no one there. No one, in the middle of a fucking blackout. And that's infuriating. No weapons easily accessible at the moment, no ways to communicate, nothing. The bullets he has will only go so far against things made of metal and blind determination and google algorithms.

Hank goes to Rick's to check on the people there. There's no one at Rick's. It's as dead as anywhere else he's gone, so he helps himself to the basement shop, grabs a couple of walky-talkies he remembered being down there with batteries.

Once he's made sure that his partner has one, he goes to the next place he knows that will have weapons of some sort free for grabs. The Mother Fucking Ax Hole. He hates that he made this joke, and yet here he is, breaking in to use an ax to get out there and start warding off these clones because he's already seen the very human corpse of someone who didn't make it.

Good thing that door is unlocked. Whoever knew this place would come in legitimately handy.

2

[hellofishies]

Prior to all of this Arkady wasn't really that frustrated with the limitations she seems to have on her abilities. They were strange and new, but not quite frustrating. Now they were frustrating though. Very frustrating. There's also a growing annoying voice in the back of her mind shaming her for not experimenting more with the limits. Instead she's been focusing on the people here and trying to watch them. That's a mistake clearly. When this is over she's going to have to go focus on testing, not making friends or learning about people.

At the moment she's flitting around. White eyes glowing brightly as she tries to teleport around the city to see what's going on with the other people here. Occasionally she stops in the streets to just look with her abilities, but it's frustrating and doesn't get her too far. Eventually, one of the stop off, outside the Ax Hole, does ping something. Someone in there maybe?

"Hello?" Her voice is low as she walks inside cautiously with her eyes still glowing brightly.

[wickedprayers]

Thane would have left after his shift hours ago if not for the sudden storm. The humid air was far too hard on his lungs, and going out in the dark, in a raging storm, in a city that likes to shift as it sees fit was anything but a good idea. He decided on staying in the Ax Hole for the time being. At least to see if the storm eventually lets up.

He's immediately alerted to the sound of someone coming in. He had left the door unlocked in case someone needed refuge from the storm, or worse. A risky move, certainly, but Thane was confident enough in his own abilities to ward off any danger, sickly or not.

He clears his throat as he approaches from the back of the bar, both to alert Hank to his presence and because his chest is tightening an awful lot. "Hank," he greets calmly considering the circumstances. "Glad to see you in one piece."

[morethanatrickster]

At the onset of the storm, Loki's first inclination was...hopeful? He'd never admit it to anyone, but he missed the man who brought the thunder with him, and the storms. Having seen no sorry weather since arriving here, to have such a thing happen so suddenly, well...he'd been foolish to think it could have been him. The attack had come swiftly, as he'd tried to navigate the darkened city by memory and conjured floating light, and the shock had been too much.

He'd ran. He wasn't proud of it, and if anyone asked he'd never admit it, but he'd ran from that thing that had been him if his father's glamor were stripped away. He'd cloaked himself in illusionary invisibility and had ran. The shifting city had foiled him, though, and he found himself in this familiar place. The darkness was closing in, and doors and windows were more easy to protect than open ground.

He was on guard the moment he realized the door was already unlocked. He made his way in cautiously, soft-booted feet stepping lightly, hand raised to throw a bolt of raw telekinetic force at anything or anyone who dared to attack him.

...but it wasn't an enemy who came into his view and he smiled, dropping the illusionary cloak of invisibility as he did.

"Hank. It is really you, isn't it?"

(OOC: And if you want Hank to attack him because he startled him, you go right ahead, man)

[notalive]

Connor's been watching Maggie too, grinning as she bounds around the room to get this little red dot - because he had absolutely no idea she'd react like this to it, or that such a silly thing could be so entertaining.

...And then the lights go out.

This shouldn't happen, and in Detroit he doesn't think it ever has during his time active, but maybe this is something that just...happens in Dualis. A storm shouldn't just cut the power like that, though, and it shouldn't leave silence like this behind it, like a blanket lain over the cityscape.

"Right."

He finds the flashlight quickly enough, but it's not the only thing in the drawer. Beside it is a revolver - a simple six-chambered weapon of a kind they probably stopped making in Detroit years ago and certainly don't issue to police officers, but Connor's seen its type all the same. He's seen a weapon exactly like this, on the kitchen floor of Hank's kitchen.

The last time didn't feel like this. Last time didn't send cold fear into the back of his throat like an ice cube in the glass of whisky he once tried out of Hank's hand - his emotions hadn't fully developed back then, hidden from him by layers of programming, dampened like the sound outside right now.

"Hank," he starts, and there's a rigidity to his voice like armour snapping together around it. "There's a gun in here. A revolver."

Arkady | OTA

[hellofishies]

A. Blackout

Maybe she should have stayed inside. It's the logical thing to do with rain beating down outside. Logical is never quite the choice that Arkady makes though. No, especially not when something feels so off. Wrong. Frustratingly unclear. There's something twisting inside that tugs at her, whispering for her to at least go look. Maybe it's her own morbid curiosity. Nothing else quite like this has occurred since her arrival. That's something to make note of. Something to see.

It's those thoughts, that curiosity, that drive her to the roof of the dorms during this storm. Her eyes glow a bright white as she steps outside, creating a forcefield around herself to keep the rain off. Sometimes it's nice to be a freak. There's a crash of thunder and not long after the lights go off. No. Everything seems to go off.

A scream escapes her mouth and she quickly puts her hands over her mouth to try to muffle it. She's not embarrassed. Definitely not. She just...doesn't want to startle anyone else that might be around. That's completely it. 100% that.

"Fuck," that she means to say as she notices that her involuntary, definitely not scared, response had let her shield down. Now she's wet. Dripping wet and up on a rooftop with no idea what's going on. "Fuck this." Her eyes go from purple to glowing white orbs as she pulls her shield back up. Time to see if anyone was around to hear that. And to teleport off the roof to see what's going on. Nothing good probably.

B.My Own Worst Enemy

Using doors is for people who can't just teleport. Arkady rarely uses doors. To get off the roof she just teleports down and then starts walking from there in the rain. White eyes glowing to keep the water off of her, at least for now. If this foreboding feeling wasn't twisting inside her gut she would keep the shield off. Rain is fun to dance in sometimes. It's not a time for dancing. That's clear. As she walks through the dark streets she can hear something behind her. She spins around quickly on her bare-feet to look directly at --

herself? Not quite herself. The face is. Almost perfect. The torso is too. It even has the matching jacket with the barbie doll heads hanging from their hair. But the feet. The feet are metal, twisted, and incomplete. Incomplete. That describes a lot of this thing. An incomplete attempt at making her.

"Stop." She puts a hand up and uses her telekinesis to push it away. It's not much force, enough to cause it to fall on the ground but not enough to destroy it. That's when she makes a dumb decision. The decision to see if it's sentient. If there's anything there. She locks minds with it and then stumbles to the ground herself as pain hits her like a sledgehammer. It's sudden. Sudden unexpected pain is always the worst. Her nose starts to bleed and she retreats back into her own mind. But now she's stuck, distracted and on the ground, which isn't a great place to be when a killer robot wants to ...well, kill you.

C. Other

If you want anything else or to encounter her fighting other robots beyond her own copy, pick C! She's going to be stupid enough to try to connect telepathically with other ones too because experimenting is what cool kids do.

Blackout

[chaosvessel]

Since his arrival, Vincent hadn't spent much time in their shared room. He could be found just about all the time on the roof, tending Boku, but also watching the city, how it shifted, how parts stayed the same. Thus far, he hadn't been able to discern a pattern, but having something to focus on kept his mind from wandering, kept him from Sleeping, from returning to his nightmares.

Something about this night, though, some sort of unseen tension in the air, had him on edge even before the thunder lightning pierced the sky, the thunder shook the very framework of the dorms, and rain poured in fog-thick sheets, drenching him from head to toe. He was busying about securing the Chocobo pen when Arkady arrived on the roof and he stared through the rain, moved to her side in an instant when she screamed, reaching out a hand to her bare, dripping shoulder.

"Arkady. What's wrong?"

B

[punchpunchkisskiss]

"Hey, you overgrown wind-up toy!"

Finn isn't particularly aware of what's going on with Arkady, but after a lengthy fencing match with his own robot double he's sure it's nothing good. Fortunately he was out on the street when the blackout happened, and an empty toy store nearby provided the perfect tool for the job: A well made plastic sword thing enough that it didn't break when he whacked robots with it. Okay, maybe a little less than perfect. But it was enough to distract the thing currently closing in on Arkady.

"Playtime's over," he shouts as he leaps off of a trash bin and dents his sword on the robot's head.

charles xavier | x-men movies

[axiomed]

( i. blackout )

[ at first, it was just a murmur. charles dismissed it because he hears murmurs all the time. they're a constant wall of sound in his mind and after years of hearing people's thoughts, you learn to tune most of it out. but when the noise level began to rise to a crescendo, to the point of even making charles wince, that — that was a problem.

he reaches out to look through someone's eyes and sees — themselves? that's new. and apparently deadly. charles pulls out and sends a psychic message to everyone nearby. ]

There is something on the loose that may resemble you. Hide yourself away and protect yourself!

( ii. the terminator situation )

[ charles had done his best to herd people to safety, psychically nudging them to safer areas and sending out blanket calming commands to tone down the panic. no one could afford that now. he dearly missed cerebro or at least a bunker to head down to.

because — as charles pauses, seeing the figure approaching towards in the dark, walking which is blatantly unfair — he could dearly use a reinforced bunker right now. jerkily, he tries to wheel back from the intruder, casting out a silent cry for help to whoever is around. ]

You're making a big mistake.

[ the intruder continues his path towards charles. ]

( iii. wildcard )

[ got a different prompt you’d like to do? ping me on captainkink / pm this journal ]

Terminator Situation

[skyward_eyes]

[The call for help is definitely heard, though Nida can't quite explain what gets him to approach. All he knows is that it feels right to come here. Coming here to help is absolutely happening. And it comes in the form of a fit young man with a metal pole, walking down the road at a leisurely pace. Should he run? Maybe. But instead he pushes a sleeve up and reveals a complex tattoo on one arm, violet and green and blue swirling together with a sheen that makes it look like moving. And with a thrust of his arm a burst of wind cuts through the air, aiming to knock the metal monstrosity off step.]

Someone need help here?

David Alleyne | OTA

[helpdesk_hero]

Time to Be Saved - Closed to Jane

The darkness doesn't matter. That's not what worries him. His greater concern was that people could hurt themselves in the dark. So he makes the stupidest mistake. He heads downstairs and pops his head outside. Only to see the horror he wasn't ready for. Him but not. Him by the skin not covering its jaw. Him but with metal hands that immediately lunge for his throat and close around it.

David's been trained to take on a number of different kinds of robots. None of them were about ones that looked like him. Not one without support, without a team. And the pain... Oh the pain. And darkness already closing at the edges of her vision given he can't breathe.


Patching People Up - OTA at Dorms

When all is said and done and the power comes on, David sends a quick message out on the dorms' internal messaging system.

If you need immediate medical assistance, come to the lobby. I've got my gear set up for assistance. Look for the black guy with the yellow glasses.

Meanwhile he's definitely set up with all of this, his medical kit open and ready to go, preparing to patch up just about anyone who could need it. Not that he looks in great shape himself. There's a nice ring of bruises around his neck, not to mention a few other scrapes and scratches. But he's doing his best.

``

[fuckregularpeople]

There were very few times during which it was helpful to have dissociative identity disorder and alters with superpowers, but one of those times was when Jane walked down the street as Silver Tongue, and she wasn't brooking any of this "robot double" bullshit.

"You okay, baby?" she asks David, managing a smile as his robot clone attacks him. "Nothing here's ᴡʀᴏɴɢ?" The silvery word hangs in the air after she speaks it, manifested and metallic, and after half a second she flicks her hand toward the robot and flings the letters into the robot's body. They sink deep into the double's body and she smiles as it sinks to the ground.

"Hang in there."

Patching Up (I'm late to the party so def feel free to ignore/not reply if you don't wanna)

[whosthemonsternow]

South is adamant she doesn't need help. Her nose stopped bleeding a while ago, her eye is still swollen but she can see out of it, her knuckles are raw and split and her knee probably needs stitches- but she's fine. Might look like shit, but entirely fine.

She's only here to see if anyone has any information on what the holy fuck any of that was. She might snag a bandaid or two, but she's here on recon not medical help, don't mind any of it.

"Hey stranger," She huffs out when she spots a familiar face- oh, name, fuck, naaaame, uh. Oh! David! Right. "Any chance you know what the hell is going on?"

[skyward_eyes]

Protection Detail

He'd been coming back from an evening working the warehouse, gotten back earlier than a number of people. And really, there's a lot to be said about how tired he was from some heavy work on repairing a truck. But it means he's been walking back with a metal staff over his shoulder when it happens. When he hears something off to the side. Sometimes approaching. He draws the staff and whirls, the weapon coming to rest near the stranger's face. Except... it was his face.

And a few minutes later the thing was on the ground, broken, as Nida hauls his weapon from the sparking body of the robot, and he frowns. This is all a mess, right? He sighs and tosses his pack aside, rolling his shoulders.

One doesn't seem likely, not after what he experienced in the village before this. So he moves to stand in the street leading toward the dorms and rolls his shoulders. Time to fight. And he needs to protect these people.

So, who could use some protection?

Dorm Complex; OTA

[ichoosefight]

All Steph wanted was to enjoy what hot coffee was left in the pot before it cooled off on the unpowered burner. Apparently that was too much to ask, if the knife that burried itself in the wall in front of her was any indication. She ducked out of the way of a second blade, which bounced off of the coffee maker and clattered onto the counter. She had the foresight to snatch it up as she turned to face her attacker.

The robot stood by the open drawer containing the kitchen knives, which it seemed determined to empty. Steph narrowly avoided a butcher knife by throwing herself to the ground, leaving the blade to stick into a drawer for a moment before falling, too heavy to stay where it was. She left that one where it fell, since it was unweildy to take with her. Instead she dove at the cabinet under the sink and pulled a fire extinguisher out just in time to deflect a fourth knife. She sprayed her would-be assassin full strength, blinding it long enough to make her escape.

The thing's face was complete, leaving no question as to who it was meant to resemble as it gave chase into the stairwell. The fire extinguisher flung blindly at it by its prey did little to slow it down, as did the cry of "can't we work this out like reasonable humanoids?!"

Jumping and swinging from railings the pursuit continued, the robot finally cutting Steph off with leaps that might have sprained or broken human limbs. Back into the hallway she went, leaving a clear line of sight between her and her pursuer unless someone came to her rescue. Basically, she was screwed.

[scathefires]

The thing about being Robin is this: your ears are trained to recognize the sound of a fight, and your reaction to run toward the danger becomes instinct. It's been a long time since Jason was Robin, but that training has stayed with him, and he moves quickly toward the all-too-familiar noises of unrest, only to find himself face to face with ... two Stephs.

"Aw, hell," he mutters, "not this shit again." He's had quite enough of evil twin attacks, thanks.

"Don't suppose it's gonna be any use to ask 'Will the real Stephanie please stand up'?"

[aleifr]

Aleifr hadn't been looking for Steph, at least not specifically. It'd been a hunch, really. A worry that, if there'd been a doppelgangrel to pose as him and come to claim his life, that there could be others stalking the darkened streets. Many of the people in the dorms could handle themselves, but not all of them would be equipped for a fight - especially not one so jarring.

So, once he'd helped the clientele at Scintillation calm down and bunker themselves for safety, he'd gone to help others who might need it.

That, is when he'd heard Steph, and fate had delivered him in time to make a difference.

An access doorway behind Steph's duplicate opens, and Aleifr steps through, covered in ugly, purpling bruises and bloodied bandages covering a number of wounds. As he does, he draws the long-bladed knife he carries out of the sheathe on his hip.

Aleifr | OTA | Scintillation

[aleifr]

Aleifr's uneasy from the time that the storm settles in. Storms aren't an uncommon thing on Fenris, but they can be as vicious as everything else on his homeworld - with the worst of them being more than capable of tearing up villages or sinking ships with ease. His discomfort at the weather is somewhat abated by the walls of stone and steel around him, but it's hard to completely distill that sort of bred-in wariness.

Of course, the fact that this is the first time he's so much as a drop of rain in Dualis doesn't do anything to make the storm less ominous.

Crystal had noticed his hackles were up. She'd come to him with a drink and told him that he was worrying too much. Her demeanor had changed a bit when he'd responded by asking if she remembered the last time there was a storm.

Still, the night went on as it usually did. Liquor flowed freely and stilled the fears of most. The girls took the stage, the patrons cheered, and all was fine until the lights went out.

Startled yelps and screams filled the place. Aleifr got to his feet, slipping his knife free of it's sheathe, but the owner's voice rang out.

"CALM DOWN!" Aleifr couldn't see where the man was, but he turned in the general direction of his voice. "Everyone stay calm! Lightning probably blew a transformer or something, that's all. Everyone. Stay. Calm."

That settled the room down somewhat, but the discomfort was palpable. People didn't seem to know what to do. They didn't know whether they wanted to brave the storm and go home or ride it out in the darkened interior of the bar. They split up into little groups and filled in the silence with hushed chatter as the owner went into the back room to grab torches.

Then the door swung open, and the room went silent.

All that Aleifr could make out about the man in the doorway is that he was big - big as Aleifr himself, more or less. Everything else was hidden in shadow as the man stood in the doorway for an uncomfortably long time, perfectly motionless.

Aleifr took a step forward. His right hand drifted toward the knife on his belt.

"Something I can help you with, friend?" Aleifr asked in a low, even voice.

The man's head snapped toward the sound of Aleifr's voice, and he could feel the man's gaze settle onto him. Without any other warning, the man swung a right hook at Aleifr's temple.

Whoever he was, he was quick. Quick enough that Aleifr was barely able to block the first punch, and quick enough that Aleifr didn't notice the follow-up left through the darkness until it thudded into his ribs. He was barely able to circle away in time to avoid another strike - a kick that was so near a miss that Aleifr could feel the displaced air on his face.

The figure pressed forward, but Aleifr backed him up with a left jab and spread his feet into a fighting stance. He didn't press forward. He wanted the enemy to move in and strike again, and when they came at him with another wild haymaker, he ducked under it and stabbed his knife into the soft flesh of their armpit ...

But they didn't react. He felt the blood leaking out of them on his hand, but they didn't so much as flinch. Instead, they just swung their arm back around and slammed the back of their fist into his jaw. It was a blow that stunned Aleifr. Left his vision swimming for a moment and forced him to stagger back as he started to taste copper.

That's when the owner came back into the main room. He shouted, demanding to know what the fuck was going on as he turned on his torch. Its light fell on the two brawling giants and revealed the intruder's face.

It was a mirror of Aleifr's own. Identical in every way save that the skin on top of it's skull was flayed bare, revealing smooth plates of steel underneath.

For a moment, Aleifr was stunned. Staring stupidly at the doppelgangrel in slack-jawed horror with all the rest of the bar as it pulled Aleifr's knife out of it's armpit with an eerily emotionless calm. If it felt any pain in doing so, it didn't show. It was heedless of the blood dribbling out of the open wound on its side.

Its attention was fixed solely on Aleifr, and the scene dissolved into chaos as it started moving forward after him again.

The doppelgangrel slashed at Aleifr's face. Aleifr leaned back enough to avoid the cut, but the room around him erupted into panic and screaming. The patrons of the bar scrambled in all directions. They bolted for the door, retreated toward the back room, cowered in the recessed booths in the wall.

Where they were going wasn't important, they only wanted to flee. As they did, they bumped into the owner or blocked the beam of his torch, causing the light to swing and strobe erratically. It played hell with Aleifr's vision, and allowed his double to catch him flat-footed with another slash. He tried to back up, but he still felt the edge of his knife bite into his shoulder. The duplicate caught him on the temple with a haymaker from the opposite side. He was reeling, and it could smell the blood leaking out of the wound on his arm and the split lip it'd given him from the back-fist. It rushed forward, pulling back for a stab, but caught it this time - square in the chest with his massive boot.

The doppelgangrel practically flew back from the force of the impact, and it's back slammed into the bar hard enough that there was an audible cracking of wood. Finally having the advantage, Aleifr rushed forward. He blocked a wild slash at his head, slamming his double's arm aside with his own forearm and throwing a hard straight into it's chin.

It's head snapped back, but it wasn't stunned by the blow the way that a flesh and blood foe would be. It retaliated without needing to lower it's head to see what it was swinging at, but Aleifr was able to duck under the punch and score two more shots into its rib cage. He felt something crunch, but apparently the damage wasn't telling enough to give the monster pause. It just slashed him again, this time slicing into the meat of his forearm and cracking the hilt of the knife into Aleifr's temple.

It was sloppy. He should have seen it coming, and he might have been if he wasn't rattled by the sight of a monster wearing his face. He feels the bite of the knife again as it slashes across his ribs. He throws up his hands to block a punch, but doesn't stop it from cracking into his nose.

For the first time since he's been here, he feels like he's truly in danger.

This thing could kill him.

That thought ... it's difficult to describe what comes over him as that thought drifts across his mind. Strange as it might sound, the fear goes away. He gets angry. A veil of red settles over his eyes, his jaw sets, and somewhere deep down, he fucking refuses the idea that this is going to be the end of him.

This fucking city is not going to kill him.

The doppelgangrel slashes at him again, and this time, Aleifr catches the knife by it's blade. He feels its edges cut into his palm and fingers, but he doesn't let go. He swings a hard right over the top of the doppelgangrel's guard and cracks it across the temple with it's knuckles. It's not knocked senseless, but the impact opens it up. He lifts up his boot and stomps it down on top of the thing's knee in oblique kick that leaves the joint bent the wrong way.

The doppelgangrel staggers, trying to find it's balance. Aleifr maintains his grip on the knife and turns into the monster. His pivot puts him back-to-chest with the thing, and he wraps his free arm around it's knife arm. He plants his forearm underneath the doppelgangrel's elbow and levers the joint until that one breaks too. He disentangles his arm and snaps his elbow back into its face. Twice. Three times. Four times, and finally it lets go of his knife. He flips the knife around and plunges it up through the bottom of the doppelgangrel's jaw and into its skull.

It goes limp, but he stabs it four more times for good measure. Just to be sure.

The room finally goes silent again. He can't see the people scattered around the room well enough to see their faces, but he can feel their eyes on him as the rush of adrenaline starts to fade.

He can only imagine what he looks like to them. Wild-eyed, blood-spattered giant standing over a corpse with the knife he'd used to make it.

They were scared of him.

He forced himself to catch his breath. Puts his knife back into it's sheathe. He tries to find words that might calm them, but he doesn't have his wife's gift for words.

"I don't know what's going on." He says after a painfully long silence. "I don't know if any more of them are out there. If there are, they have to go through me."

He doesn't know if that does anything for them.

He hopes it does.

Cissie | OTA

[cisskabob]

The storm was unsettling enough on it's own; Cissie is mildly alarmed to realize how comfortable she's grown here in the city, how accustomed she's become to the day to day way of things, especially after the uncertainties of the Village, or Wonderland. She has a job to go to with regular hours, she has access to food without having to hunt, gather, grow or store it, she has electricity and a place to live, and people she cares about. And the weather is never something she has to think or worry about; she doesn't even think to look at any weather reports, even if they exist.

Then comes the blackout, and the silence. Cissie had been used to living without electricity and the constant background thrum of noise that comes from living in a modern city with power, back in the Village, but here? The silence and stillness that accompanies the power outage is eerie and wrong in ways she can't name.

Her doppelganger finds her on the streets, making her way back to the dorms, hurrying to find her friends, to see what they can do to keep everyone safe for however long this situation may last.

It's not an easy fight, and one she won't be forgetting any time soon. It's going to haunt her dreams for a while, though at the moment, she's not thinking of that. She's only thinking that if her robot double was this hard to take down and incapacitate, she can only imagine what Tim or Jason or Steph or some of her other friends are being faced with. She can only hope that they aren't being confronted with murderous duplicates, but somehow she doubts they're that lucky.

Injured, exhausted and scared, Cissie rushes back to the dorms as quickly as she can, hoping against hope that the others are okay.

[ooc: Cissie is available to help folks with injuries thanks to a lot of first aid training/experience; she also can help fight if needed, and will want to help anyone she comes across however they might need.]

[scathefires]

The power's still out in the dorms when Jason returns from a sweep through the city blocks surrounding the building, evidence of the battles left on him in cuts, scrapes, and bruises, though nothing's broken or dislocated, and he's definitely not dead this time. Jason may not learn from every mistake he makes, but that one? Yeah, he did.

Unsurprisingly, the front desk is unattended, but there's still not enough light to make out whether any other evil twin-bots are in the vicinity of the lobby, so Jason figures he'll just draw anything lurking out into the open - by calling to them.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are!" He's high on adrenaline and armed with a shotgun, along with two pistols stuck into the back of his waistband for backup, all of which he'd "borrowed" from a dealer's shop down the block that was left entirely unattended.

closed - sephiroth

[bravers]

Take my bike. Go- it'll be faster. Make sure she's okay.

Some time ago, he'd said that. About half an hour or so actually, and since, he'd stayed in the warehouse on the edge of town in order to keep an eye on it. Riots had been the main danger. He was pretty sure the fact that power, communications, everything seemed to be down would encourage riots. Of course, it would. But not here.

If anywhere was going to get hit, it'd be somewhere else. He owed Seifer that much, at the very least. And all of them- Seifer, Squall, Tifa, they needed this place. Too much work had been put into the warehouse to leave it open- to not watch it.

Bereft of any form of light, the warehouse is almost creepy. But it's fine. He's not afraid of the dark- he's seen enough things that actually warranted fear to put any stock into being afraid of anything as silly as darkness. That, and Seifer and Squall had decimated what'd come for them. There was barely enough left of the robots to even recognize what they had been. They simply looked like circuitry, metal and...skin. And hair.

In the darkness, he kneels to where moonlight pools on the warehouse floor- having dragged both of the robots that'd once resembled Squall and Seifer there. And as he turns one without a face over using the toe of his boot, there's a sound.

What...?

It smashes through a grimy, dusty overhead window to the ground- around ten feet away from him. It lands roughly. Certainly not on its feet- and he can't help it- but it almost reminds him of his own experience of falling through a church roof some time ago. Except... it doesn't need rousing. Not like he did. There's a whir, the sound of pistons releasing air- and it rises.

It's scrawny. It's short. It's possessive of a head of strangely bright hair that sticks up at the top, longer on one side than the other and- it's him.

But the eyes?

They're...
They're Sephiroth's eyes.
That's not-

That's not possible.

The eyes. That causes fear. Fear and dread, crawling of the skin, a roiling of the stomach, and it causes his own eyes to widen- his mouth to open- and him to retreat backwards, if anything, for enough room to take his sword from the holster at his back.

But there's something else. A shiver down his spine- the fact his head is moving to the side, eyes focusing on something else- not for any reason, more like a compulsion- and he doesn't know how, not really, but someone else is here.

[sanephiroth]

The first time they 'met' in this neon-lit city, Sephiroth hadn't put much thought into the strange way he seemed to be able to triangulate onto Cloud. This time, the long trek to this out-of-the-way location has given him enough time to think. It's not a call. A resonance? A very dim beacon in a sea of dark.

One that he'd continue not to notice if not for the fact that there's suddenly two of them by the time he's almost there. He thought he'd just been wandering in a random direction before, exploring the city as he's been doing. Maybe not.

He's crossed the entrance of the warehouse when Cloud notices him. He's not worried about an attack. More intent on the fact that there are two of them. From this angle, the robot has its back to him. He couldn't see its eyes.

He cants his head, using the movement in place of a shrug.

"It's your fight."

Wanda Maximoff [Open]

[minus1twin]

BLACKOUT

Wanda was a light sleeper. It was a produce of her past and line of work but it suited her. It was the thunder that woke her. She shot up to a seated position, wake and tense to lash out at anything that might be attacking. Of course, nothing was attacking. Wanda slid from her covers and walked over to the window to look out at the rain beating against the glass.

"Rain?" That was odd...

She remained in her sweat pants and tank top as she walked through her room. She tried to call but the phones were dead. Everything was dead. "What?" An unsettling feeling crept down Wanda's spine as she eyed the stormy weather. It was unsettling...

"I'm going out." She called to her brother before heading for the door to her room on the fifth floor to the streets outside.

DOPPELGANER
[ooc: content warning with some robot body horror.]

The rain plastered her hair to her face as she looked out over the city. There were others standing just outside of the dorms and some even moving away to investigate further. It was just a black out but something was wrong. Wanda couldn't place it. It might have just been paranoia but she couldn't shake the unpleasant feeling.

She headed a short way down the street, her misty green eyes focused in front of her as she tried to make out the shadows and shapes in the rain.

"Hello?" She called when she saw a flicker of a shadow cross her view. It was odd. She didn't feel the thoughts of another person but she saw something... "Hello?" She called again and turned just as the shadow stepped out of the rain and wrapped its metallic fingers around her neck.

Wanda gasped and in a sudden burst of power, a red light shoot the figure away. It looked like her but with a mechanical arm that reminded Wanda of Ultron's toys and an eye. One single human eye set in a skull partially covered by skin. It twisted in an inhuman way and came after her again.

She thought she was going to be sick...

WILDCARD

[ooc: COME AT ME! I am up for anything so toss it my way! Let me know how much awesome power that is Wanda that you want. She is here to help and also to calm the chaos if she can.]

Agent South Dakota | Red vs Blue | OTA (backtagging and late to the party whoops)

[whosthemonsternow]

Blackout

South had finally decided to call it a night and head to her room. It was another boring day, so far nothing really exciting has happened while being the Mayor's bodyguard. A lot of following around behind her, eyeing any and every being that came anywhere near them, waiting ready for a fight- but. Nothing. Not even an angry person wanting to spit at them. She had a small glimmer of hope when one guy was stalking around just outside the invisible "greenzone" she made around the Mayor, but it turned out he just wanted to ask a quick question about building zoning or whatever-the-fuck. Ugh.

As she peels off her leather jacket and untucks her tank top from her jeans, the lights flicker. She pauses and glances up then around the hall curiously, about to take another step and shrug it off when everything goes dark. She checks her devices, no luck with them either. Blackout? Is that even possible with as much tech as they toss around this fucking place? Apparently. Of all days to have left her flashlight at home since she hasn't needed it even a little while on duty. Awesome.

She's not unsettled, just feeling mildly inconvenienced as she pulls the jacket back on and decides she should probably head back to the Mayor for some extra guarding. She figures it's pointless, it's just a blackout, but it is her job. Protect and secure the Mayor. If anyone was going to try something stupid, it'd be during a blackout.

However, about halfway back down the hall, the lightening flashes through a window and illuminates her shadowed space. Which could be helpful in seeing, except what she sees isn't helpful at all. A person. Maybe? They looked kind of janky, shuffling in a very jerky way. Could be hurt. Could be drunk.

"You got a problem, pal?" She calls out for them to identify themselves, but is only greeted with a deep, almost metal on metal sound rather than a real reply.

Alright. That has her pausing, eyes narrowing as if that can help her see any better. She squares her hips and readies her fists in case this asshole is up to something, listening to the slide and thud of them slowly but steadily getting closer. She didn't get a great look at them, but the brief glimpse gave her enough information. About her size, slow moving so far at least, possibly hurt or impaired in some way. Well, it won't be her first fight swinging blind, whatever.

The lightening strikes again for a little longer this time, brightening up the hall and the person as they pass the window. She. As she passes the window, lit up much better this time. That should be a benefit to her- except for what it is that she sees. Herself.

While the fight didn't really last that long, once she got the upper hand the thing was finished easily enough, it wasn't easy. She's left panting, bruised and bloodied, and entirely freaked out. What the absolute fuck?

"What the absolute fuck?!" She ends up repeating her thoughts out loud, pausing a second before stooping down over the body to search it.

She doesn't find anything useful, and the continued darkness doesn't help a damn thing, but she can feel metal and wires along the clothes. It doesn't feel like armor, more like a robot or android... But one of her?

The sound of someone coming down the hall catches her attention and she's up instantly, pressing back against the wall and readying herself for another fight as she hears them walk closer to where she's hiding around the corner. South considers yelling out a warning, but she's not going to give away her location. Could be no one, just another lost person, but she's not risking it being another goddamn robot thing!