dualislogs | we’re ready to make you one of us.

Entry tags:

we’re ready to make you one of us.

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There's suddenly a sillouetted shadow of himself as he's grabbing an ax, startled at the light source behind him. He jolts, spinning, nearly dropping the ax.

And it's just a little bald girl. Doesn't look older than a teenager or twenty to him, but maybe that's a failure of judgment from her face. Under twenty-five, at least. And he's guessing not one of the robot clone fuckers because she's not attacking.

"It's okay!" He holds up his hands, meaning to reassure her. "I'm with the Dualis Police Department. Unfortunately, there's something very wrong at the station right now, but I can still help if you need it. You might need to dim the headlights though."

He lifts his hand to shield his eyes from her literally brilliant gaze.

Edited 2019-10-21 05:00 (UTC)

"Oh, I don't think it's really okay." There's a hint of a English style accent. The exact location is a bit hard to place, but it's somewhere over there. She releases a slightly exasperated huff and then closes her eyes and opens them back up to their normal purple non-glowing color.

"They're not headlights. They just glow when I do things and I didn't want to get wet." It's solid logic. Who needs umbrellas when you can just be one?

"I think there's something very wrong everywhere but I can't fully tell." Disappointment and a minor twinge of guilt mixes together in her voice. It reminds her of home, where she kept trying to see the damage they'd done further away but couldn't make out quite enough. She should have been trying more here, just like she did back home.

"What happened at the police station?"

She probably didn't mean that to sound like a threat, but it sounds a little like one. He knows the situation, though. It doesn't feel acceptable out there in the least. "Usually 'okay' is just a person or the room. If it was the whole world, it's hardly ever okay. But it means I'm not intending to hurt you."

He will accept the explanation as to the high-beams. Hell, if they work like an umbrella? Go with it.

"Can you usually tell?" He asks, hooking two of the axes into his belt. "I don't know. Nothing's fuckin' disturbed. It's like everyone stayed home. Same at the other places I've stopped. It's like the only people out are the ones with fuckin' Dollar Store quality stunt doubles running around. Have you run into yours yet?"

"Sometimes I take things too literally. Or not literally enough maybe." Either or. Both work similar enough for their purpose here. "I don't intend to hurt you either." The smile she offers is genuine but much less bright than usual. It's not a smile time right now. Everything's a bit too dark. In another circumstance she might chuckle at her own funny though, but there's no laughter for now.

"I can usually see more. See further if I try. It's harder here." She scrunches her eyes up as she wonders if that's a good enough explanation. Probably not. She's bad at this. "I can see things if I concentrate. Sometimes the future. That one's harder. But usually I can..." she waves her right hand a few times. "I guess project myself other places to see what's going on." Her mouth twists in a small grimace. "It's not quite right here." Her fault for not paying more attention though. Time to chastise herself again internally.

"They were smart to stay home. Unless they didn't stay home by choice." Maybe people just got stopped by their others. She nods slowly at his other question. "I did. I don't think me liked myself very much." Not surprising really. "Did you run into yours?"

"Yeah, well, that's okay too." He tries to return that smile as she comments on her ability to take things literally, one that wrinkles his nose up 'cause, if it's a time for smiling at all, it's a time for long suffering ones.

"I don't think it would have let you."

He puts up the flashlight, looks out the window of the bar for any creepy humanoid shapes. "It's docking people's abilities. Everyone who has 'em. I think it has them limited either so its robots can overwhelm 'em, or so no one can reach wherever his core is. Not without two good teleports."

That's his guess. If it's not that far underground, then it's that far with a wide open area that would be heavily monitored.

"Yeah... I ran into mine. He was a fucking asshole. Are you hurt?" He thinks there's a first aid kit here because, well, ax place. But he can get her to a real clinic if she needs it. The way things are rolling those doors would likely be unlocked there, too.

Edited 2019-10-22 03:12 (UTC)

"I think only some of my abilities were docked." There's hesitation in her copying his use of the word docked. It's not something she's used often but she's going with it.

"Hmm...I think, maybe?" She trails off as she follows the light from his flashlight to look outside herself. "I should have been trying to see more. I've only noticed a difference with teleporting and projection. But I haven't tried other things much." Why hasn't she been trying more? "Do you think they choose what they...dock so the Head is protected?" She shakes her head and looks over at him.

"I was. But I can fix it when I get broken. Mostly. Were you hurt?" She knows a bit about first aid and can kinda help people. Or she could back home. Who knows about here fully and she was never as good at it as Miki.

"Bumps and bruises, nothing broken." Oh but it'll swell tomorrow, he's betting. But right now, nothing he has to worry about it. "My partner killed it before it could do too much damage." And man what a fucking turn of events; Connor having to deal with the duplicate.

"Yeah, I think you won't be able to do more than the Head might find inconvenient. There are a lotta people here with limits they don't normally have. Whatever it was planning, it probably would have screwed anyone over."

Which isn't great by any means.

"Do you wanna come with me? We can go see if anyone else needs help. Not everyone here knows how to fight." He's thinking that getting her out and being more proactive might help curb that sense of helplessness. There are still bad generic knock-offs that need to be taken off the shelves. "Did your double remember anything about you, by the way?"

"That's lucky you have a partner here." She says the words wistfully and then looks him up and down. "Are you sure nothing got broken up? I can check?" Should she ask that of someone she doesn't know? Probably not. "That's probably invasive." It's becoming more and more apparent to her that it's been a very long time since she might not be that great at interacting with people. Oh well. People think she's weird back home anyway.

"That's important. Or maybe it could be important. What limits people have. I don't believe what its told is really is what it's planning." Not at all. But knowing that other people had limits that might be specific kind of limits seems important somehow.

"Yes, I'll go with you. I'd like to help!" She's not always allowed to help back home. Instead she's sent away somewhere safe so that she doesn't get or doesn't get in the way. She hesitates for a second before answering his question. "It knew one thing. Sort of."

"Yeah, especially right now. And luckily he fuckin' had his own double back home. So I guess we're one for one in having damn duplicates fuck with us."

Sorry, Arkady. His language is his outlet for his tension.

His back still hurts, along with parts of his arm and his hip. "Nah, it's okay, I think I'm fine. I've been in worse fights. Just uh... caught me by surprise. Didn't think I'd jump myself... Uh, so, this double-" he goes to the door, and looks out one way and then the other. Nothing yet. "-The thing it knew. Was it something you hadn't told anyone else?"

Because Hank has a really, really fucking bad feeling.

"Everyone must be getting one. But why and where?"

Oh, she's heard much worse so she doesn't even bat an eye at it. Where seemed important. Where had they come from?

"That was the point I think. To catch us by surprise." Makes sense given the blackout and everything. It could have been a surprise attack. Or something like that. She hesitates and when she answers her voice is very quiet.

"Yes. It shouldn't have known."

"Whatever made those knows some of what we know. I don't know if it was before or not." He remembers the moment he'd started asking Connor personal questions and the other one knew. It downloaded his memories. Something is downloading their memories. Haphazardly, imperfectly, but it is.

Hank waits for Arkady before going onto the sidewalk. With the eerie quiet, even with conversation he can hear scuffling and shouting occasionally.

It makes him uneasy. It means any plans that they might come up with might be useless, even with the most secrecy or avoidance. Maybe the reason there are so few Heart is because it's just not made it to the memories of the newer memories yet, and not the older ones. Maybe that whole comment I’ll make sure you’re better wasn't changing someone, but replacing them. Maybe maybe maybe fucking maybe.

He'll have to bat all this shit around in his head later. He just knows these things remember shit that's not theirs.

"So your abilities work a little bit, right? Think you can figure out a direction we'd be most needed?" Not everyone here can fight.

"But why would they want them to know what we know?" Why is always the question on the tip of her tongue. Why is where motives come from and once you know why you can move forward better. At least she knows now that she's right to be suspicious of this place. "I wish it hadn't known."

The last little bit is something she mutters under her breath as she walks out onto the sidewalk. She looks around and then actually pulls her jacket up over her bare shoulders. It's eerie out and she's feeling the desire for something to cling to. Usually, back home, it'd be Connor or Kirk. Here there's nobody and it's strangely cold. Maybe that's just because she's thinking too much. Thinking about what it means that those things knew things they knew.

"They work some. I haven't been..." she frowns. "Trying as much as I should have been. I can try to look but I won't be here anymore." She gestures up and down at her body. When she speaks again she's got a tiny bit of hesitation in her voice. "You'd have to watch the me here."

He can tell this is a difficult situation for her; why wouldn't it be? Even without knowing any of her circumstances, it's a body double in a strange place knowing shit it shouldn't, with her ability to defend herself properly purposefully weakened.

"I wish they hadn't, either." He says, catching that last little bit. Even memories that didn't feel deep felt like intrusions. He'd learned that from his scattered thoughts from before, the memory sharing. But rather than ask her about that now.

"Let's stay by the building, alright? I'll watch over you while you look." He puts his hands on her shoulders to urge her under a broader overhang, opting for that rather than going back into the bar. Too dark in there. At least there's some night flavored light out here.

"My one ability is to be an inconvenience to assholes so I'll keep anyone fishy away."

"Did yours something you didn't want people to know?" Maybe hers only said something like that because there's so much she doesn't want people to know. Hiding things isn't malicious. Or she doesn't mean for it to be. Guilt is a powerful motivator though and there's a lot of guilt in her. Guilt that she keeps to herself hidden underneath her smiles.

She tilts her head and then nods. "Okay." There's no reason to not trust him and besides, she can't die. Or at least she couldn't back home. It hasn't occurred to her that this place would be different in that respect. It's another thing she should add to her list of things that she should have tested. Or should be testing. Maybe once this is over.

"I like fishies." She smiles and then sits down right there under the overhang. "Don't get freaked out, okay?" With that statement she grins, crosses her legs, and then her eyes start to glow again. After a second her body relaxes as she tries to look around. It's a bit harder than she remembers it being back home. More than a bit. A few minutes pass and then she comes back and blinks.

"I can't see everything." The expression on her face looks almost like a pout. "Or that much. I should be able to see more. Somethings interfering!" And that's just plain frustrating. "But I think there's some people in trouble a block or so away. Being attacked by themselves."

"Yeah, it did. Except it knew ev-"

There's something there that makes Hank pause. He raises a finger. "Actually it knew what a lot of people did. When everyone started remembering other people's memories, that's what it remembered. It remembered things those other people saw."

And that means...

He has no fucking idea what. "This is gonna fuckin' drive me nuts." Right. He has no fucking clue. But Arkady's was more exclusive. God this is gonna fuckin' bug him.

But he remains quiet as she concentrates, and this time he's expecting the Children of the Damned look so it doesn't surprise him. He just keeps an eye out and waits.

"It's alright. You probably are literally doing the best you can. It works." About a block away or so. "Which direction?" He prepares to head that way, lighting up the LEDs on his uniform so he'll stand out on approach. He'd rather be something for people to run toward than worry about being something that could be aimed at. Stealth doesn't matter as much at the moment.

"No, it's not alright." There's a dejected quality in her voice that she's not attempting to hide. If ever there was someone to be accused of wearing her emotions on her sleeve, it's Arkady. In her mind she should be able to do more, see more, help more. It's the same type of pressure she puts on herself back home. It's also the same type of pressure she internalized on herself back home.

She stands up quickly and then looks from left to right in order to reorient herself with this perspective. "That way." She points to the right. "I'm pretty sure. It's slightly different above. Yes. That way." She nods emphatically and starts to walk that way just assuming he'll come along.

"People remembered other people's memories here?" That sounds like something she can do but she doubts that's what he means. But it does peak her curiosity. She thinks maybe she's heard a mention of something like that from someone else, but she's not entirely sure. Things come in and out of her mind so easy sometimes. "Being nuts isn't so bad." She turns back to smile at him.

"It's alright to me, though. You don't have to do everything. I'm a detective. I got the normal shitty senses, but I can take the little bit you give me and run with it."

Sometimes 'okay' and 'alright' are small. "I'm not disappointed, it helps."

He does follow along, though, getting ready to pull the gun before he picks up one of the axes.

"Nah, it isn't so bad. It can be a damn inconvenience, but some pretty brilliant people were out of their minds." You know, when you're a woman that shifts between personalities ragefully on the sidewalk or bizarre ladies with telepathy or, god help him, his own depression making him point guns at people and shatter at the seams.

"It was like you'd suddenly be reminded of something. A smell or a set of words or a face and you'd remember something that happened to you. And you were like, what the fuck, this didn't happen to me?" Hee boggles again at it. "And some of the stuff- I didn't want people to see. But a lotta people saw it. And that fuckin' thing that looked like me? Had seen that stuff."

"I should still be able to do more. I can back home." And she wants to be able to help more. "I can usually do things by myself. Even though sometimes they don't think I should. Or can." They being her friends back home. Most of them knew she was capable on her own. Some of them even thought she was dangerous on her own. Yet they still rarely like to actually let her get involved when the dangerous things started happening. It's frustrating, especially when all she wants to do is be able to help.

"I don't think it's an inconvenience anymore. It's just the way some people are." Nuts is the way she's described by others so often that she's accepted it as at least partially true. She knows it's not completely untrue, but it's also not completely true. Some of it is just because they don't understand the things that happened that changed her. It always seems so difficult for people to just understand each other.

She listens to his descriptions of the memories with an ever growing look of concern. "I can see people's memories if I want to. But it's not like that." Telepathy isn't something she's trying to hide here. There doesn't seem to be much of a point and she figures it's best to be at least a bit honest about it. There's discomfort surrounding the idea of mucking around in someone's head and she doesn't want to make anyone uncomfortable. "Do you know how that happened?"

"I believe you. It's shitty this place is such a dick about taking away people's abilities. I don't even know how someone would do something like that."

He makes a so so motion with his hand. "Makes the job a little more complicated." Because some people didn't handle their crazy so well. He doesn't handle his crazy so well. Someone that's hurting can scare people, and sometimes someone that's confused can hurt people. He's from a line of work where mental illness grows even in the healthiest people because of the strain of failure, with more public servants suffering from that than on the job conflict.

But that's entirely beside the point, because he gets that she's concerned about her quirks.

"For the record you don't seem crazy. You seem kinda scared and disappointed in yourself. Maybe a little weird, but that's it." Just the eye thing in the dark was pretty creepy. "And no, no clue. Maybe something was trying to take our memories for the clones and fucked it up somehow. It wouldn't surprise me if the Head had psychics or somethin'." He listens carefully for sounds as they go, staying on high alert.

"I don't like that someone can do that." There's a distinctly childish quality to her tone in that. Like someone throwing a momentary tantrum over having their ice cream melt. It passes quickly and she just shakes her head. "I don't have limits back home." Some compared them to gods. She's not really sure if she likes that comparison. It's close enough to accurate though; which means it would take something of considerable power to take hers away. That's disconcerting.

"Kait would say something like that." It was always about the job for Kait and that job was police stuff. Kait would also tell her she was crazy though. And threaten to cut her parts off, which she still found very rude.

"I get weird a lot." So very very often. But she likes weird better than crazy for the most part. "There's a lot to be disappointed with." It's a statement that applies to more than just things in this place, but she doesn't elaborate. "I think the Head has a lot more than they say." Maybe that's just her being paranoid. Or maybe not. Something made her very uneasy though. "I think what I saw wasn't too far from here."

"I don't like it, either. And you know what? I think you're right. I think eventually it can have even more of our memories." And that's not good. Especially with the Heart having dragged so many people into their mess against their will. Trying foolishly to simultaneously appeal to heroism and endorse the idea that an agenda was more important than people.

They didn't want help they wanted strong minions and resources. And that's infuriating.

Hank is very much a cop. And one that has threatened other cops with his own gun, but when they've been especially bad. "Alright, lead the way. Get behind me when we get close." He doesn't even question her lack of limitations back home. She's helping him here with what she has now.

"Why would it want our memories though? Mine are bad." So bad that she doesn't always want them. That's one of the many reasons she drinks. So why would anything else want their memories and knowledge? "Unless..." She looks over at him with a very concerned look. "There was this movie I saw once. People got put into pods and then something else replaced them. The something else was like them but not." It's been a long time since she's seen any movies but everyone knew that movie. It's the kinda cheesy movie her and her friends would have put on in the background to only partially watch while they did more interesting things. But now she wishes she'd paid a bit more attention to it. The thoughts cause her to shiver as an uneasy chill sweeps up her spine.

Luckily there isn't much time for her to get too lost in her own thoughts. A scream breaks through the silent night up ahead and the sounds of a struggle can be heard ahead. Her eyes flash bright white just for a second and then she turns to look at him with normal eyes. "Two people. I think their things are attacking them." She keeps her voice low so they aren't heard. This would be easier if she could just talk in his mind but she doesn't want to make him feel freaky again.

"I saw that movie, too. And considering how badly my duplicate wanted to kill me? I'm thinking that's the case. Fuckin' traumatized my partner too. Pisses me the hell off."

Hank. Hank you traumatized him.

But yeah, that scream is pretty damn distracting. Hank draws his gun and rushes off, flashlight focussed in the direction of the screams. Sometimes its hard to tell who is the fake and who is not, if they are twins? Happen to look alike? People happen to look alike, here. His duplicate did a good job of hiding what was wrong with him.

So he has to make a tough call. He can start with disabling shots, but it takes a lot to slow these things down. Still he manages to call out a "Freeze! Get away from each other!" just as he turns the corner, ready to respond if they don't do what he says immediately.

If they had more time she would have asked about the traumatizing parts, but they didn't. The corner is turned and with it the danger of the situation is clear. There's a young woman--two young women actually. Both look very similar. They're medium height, glasses, wearing a long sleeve sweater, jeans, and boots, with mousy brown hair. The clothes make it hard to tell which might be a robot duplicate and which was just a scared innocent woman. They both froze though and stared at him.

"Help! This thing it-it's me and it's attacking me!"

The other one shook her head fervently. "No!!! Don't listen! T-this thing attacked me!"

Well, that's inconvenient. Arkady looks at Hank and frowns.

"I can tell which!"

He hates this situation. Worse, because he doesn't know either of these women. But what he does remember? Was that his doppelganger was impatient.

"Put your hands up!" He aims at them, veering between one to the other. He tries to look at those raised hands while he's at it- his double had fucked up hands with no nails.

And then he just stands there. Waiting for one to react. Waiting for one to get cold in the rain and show it. He doesn't lower his gun.

"Strike up a conversation. Make 'em tell you all about theirself," he tells Arkady. Like this, he can watch for physical ticks, discrepancies in their story.

we’re ready to make you one of us.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)