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

[aleifr]

"Enough of it." Aleifr huffs, feeling his limbs grow a little heavier as the rush of adrenaline wears off. "My copy found me at work."

He experimentally flexes the fingers on his heavily-bandaged right hand, trying to curl them into a fist, but scowls when they barely twitch.

[ichoosefight]

She grimaces at the weak twitching of those fingers. It's obviously not the motion he was going for.

"Alright, I've got supplies in my room, it's probably the closest first aid you're gonna get. Can you climb, or do we have to take the stairs? Neither of us should be wandering around on our own right now."

[aleifr]

"Stairs." He answers without a moment's hesitation. "Wouldn't trust my grip right now. Even if I was lifting something a lot lighter than me."

[ichoosefight]

She nods. She doesn't like it, but she expected as much.

"Stay behind me. I'm on the top floor, but they could still come at us from downstairs." She keeps her voice low, though she suspects with the technology available here the robots probably have heat and vibration sensors. She waves for him to stick to the wall as she creeps to the stairwell door and turns the knob in near silence. Her back is to the door frame as she pushes the door gently open, waits a moment, then peeks through. The stairwell is totally silent, so she waves him to follow her up the stairs.

The process is repeated at the door into the hall, but it's all clear until they're safely inside her room. She locks the door behind them before digging into the closet, as comfortable in the darkness as though she were working. In a way, she is. The backpack she pulls out holds her first aid kit, but it's also where she keeps her Batgirl gear. She sets that aside for now. She may need some of it, but she hasn't decided how much. The first aid kit is all she needs right now.

"Alright, sit. Let's take a look."

[aleifr]

Aleifr can't help but sigh when she says that she's on the top floor, because of course she is given how this damned night is going. That's, however, is as far as his commentary goes. After that, he nods his understanding and falls into step behind her.

At each landing he waits for her signal and then plods up the stairs after her, his legs feeling just a little heavier each time. He's damned grateful by the time they've finally reached her room, and when she offers him a seat he settles down into it heavily and lets out a long exhale.

The wrappings around his right hand were sticky with drying blood. It takes a little coaxing to find the end and begin to unwind them, but he manages eventually. The pain is ... it isn't less than it was before, but it was duller. More distant.

It wasn't necessarily a good thing given he'd had a hole stabbed through the center of his palm.

[ichoosefight]

She unwraps them all with gentle efficiency, tossing them in her small trash bin as she goes. She might need more bandages than she usually keeps in her backpack, but first she has to assess the damage.

"This shouldn't hurt," she warns him, "so tell me if it does." The blood left under the bandages is cleaned off with (alcohol-free) wipes up to a point where she can see the wound itself. She hums thoughtfully at it.

"Could be a lot worse. What did he get you with?" She starts cleaning what blood she can from the wound itself before she can apply pressure to try to stop the sluggish bleeding.

[aleifr]

"My knife." He growls, wincing slightly as she dabs at the wound. "My double found me at work. I managed to stab it in the gut during the fight ... as you can imagine, was a bit less effective than that usually is. Wasn't expecting it to smash me in the jaw and pull the knife out of it's belly and try to stab me with it."

[ichoosefight]

"Crap," she sighs. "Probably got some of that robot juice in your bloodstream. Are you having any symptoms that aren't normal for blood loss?"

She peers at the injury more closely, half hoping she'll be able to tell by sight what sort of gunk got into it from the knife.

"This'll need stitching," she adds as an aside.

[aleifr]

"I figured as much."

Hopefully something in this gods damned city will be able to heal the wound cleanly, though. Without the aid of someone can knit flesh with magic, wounds like the one on his hand tend to have a lasting effect.

"As for feeling differently ..." He shakes his head. "No. Nothing that I've noticed, at least, but it hasn't been long."

[ichoosefight]

"Well keep an eye on it." If they're lucky all of the poison bled out. "We'll need to get you to a real doctor as soon as we can. Hold this in place? You gotta press hard." She places two lumps of gauze, one on each side of the wound. Once he takes them from her she can get out the stitching needle and surgical thread.

[aleifr]

"Hopefully there's someone we can trust." Aleifr grunts, pressing the gauze into place as tightly as he can with his free hand.

[ichoosefight]

"I wouldn't worry about that," she comments distractedly. Her kit holds a couple of needles individually packed for sanitation purposes. She peels one open and works on threading it.

"If the city wants to hurt us there are easier ways than failing to treat blood poinsoning. Setting loose killer robots, for example."

[aleifr]

"True." He concedes. "As back-up plans, though, I've heard worse."

Surprisingly, the guy from a world where everything is trying to kill him is a little paranoid. Even if he's being a touch sarcastic about it at just this moment.

[ichoosefight]

"I dunno. If this was their plan I don't think the power would be out. Why not wait until the robots were finished? They might be planning to kill us all, but I don't think they meant to do it today."

She pulls Aleifr's hand away from the top bandage, making sure he keeps pressure on the bottom. Then she starts stitching, piercing the skin quickly but taking her time to set each stitch properly. She doesn't have so much experience with this that she can afford to get careless.

[aleifr]

Aleifr considers that, wincing slightly as the needle pokes through his skin and drags the thread through behind it. It hurts, that much is obvious, but this isn't the first time someone's had to sew him up ... he's used to fighting through it.

Her idea, though ... that makes sense.

"You think this was a fuck up, then?" He asks. "The doubles weren't meant to get loose?"

[ichoosefight]

"They aren't exactly high quality," she notes, the majority of her attention focused on her work.

"Though I have to wonder how they could have gotten out accidentally. If a power outage could do it all they'd need are backup generators." She finishes the last stitch on this side and sits back with a sigh.

"I've got a bad feeling about this." An idea is forming about what exactly has happened here, and she doesn't like it.

"Flip it over, and keep pressure on the finished side. No sense taking chances on blood loss."

[aleifr]

Aleifr can't help but scoff as he follows her next set of instructions. He's had a bad feeling about this damned place from the moment he arrived. He'd feel vindicated if being right didn't mean the situation was utterly fucked.

"Either the Machine prepared poorly, or there's bigger problems in the works."

Neither possibility is particularly appealing.

[ichoosefight]

"Well," she says doubtfully, "you always have to account for human error..." Which is to say Heart error, since she's pretty sure every aspect of the city is being run by a computer. She wouldn't put it past them to pull something like this on purpose, much less accidentally. They like to use a fist when a finger would suffice.

She finishes up his hand, presses the gauze back to the wound and sets about wrapping the thing with fresh linen.

"How did the streets look when you were out there?"

[aleifr]

"Damn near abandoned." He grunts "Some signs of struggle, but not much. My thinking is that anyone not driven indoors by the storm ducked inside whenever they heard trouble coming."

[ichoosefight]

She sighs.

"Of course they did." Because her life can never be easy. She secures the new bandages in place and tosses the trash from the whole operation. That done, she gets up to riffle through her utility belt. Some of the items will be useless against a bunch of robots, and she's already removed the electronics that don't function without Batman's network. She fills the remaining spaces with still more first aid supplies and all of the knives she swiped from her own double.

"I need to change. No reason not to bring a little extra protection." She can always wear a jacket over the bat symbol. Secrecy is a difficult habit to break.

[aleifr]

"You're going out there, then?" Aleifr asks, glancing up from his cursory inspection of the fresh bandages.

[ichoosefight]

"Of course. I'm betting there's one of those things for each of us, and probably more people who need medical attention." She takes it for granted, of course, that if people need help she's going to be the one helping them.

[aleifr]

Of course she does.

"Got any weapons to spare?"

She won't be doing it alone, though.

[ichoosefight]

She turns to offer him a smile. It'll be nice to have company.

"Mostly projectiles. But I'm sure we can get you a good bludgeon somewhere."

[aleifr]

"That'd do me just fine." He grins wolfishly. "I feel like hitting something."