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

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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)

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)

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?"

Hank finishes pulling down the second ax of choice, sticking it in his belt before the sound of Thane coming in draws his attention.

Even if the door had been locked, there are a lot of doors with electronic locks that had failed. That's how he'd walked into Rick's. The power going out didn't seem to be a thing that people considered around here. Or else it was something too well prepared for.

"Police station is empty. I'd arm up if I was you. Seems like the only people out are the ones that had unwanted copycats. That, or whichever one won the fight."

He steps away from the ax storage in case Thane wants to get his own.

"BAH!" Hank jerks back, hopping three times with all the grace and elegance of a panda that just heard its baby sneeze. He did reach for his gun, but like any good cop that's learned there will be hell to pay for shooting at a bad time he just manages to not draw it. But he straightens up. Right. Invisible. Loki, god of mischief and apocalypses and big world eating snakes or something. Cool. Got it.

No judgment would be had here. His hackles are most assuredly up. Loki might see it as cowardice but if he knew, Hank would certainly assure him that it's tactical. Pretty useful to go invisible right now.

"Yeah, it's me. You come across another you yet?"

And he's on his way over to grab a couple of axes. Ain't that appropriate narrative; he bothered to learn how to toss this shit and now he's gotta actually go fight with them.

"The police department is fucking empty." Which is really, really wierd."

"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?"

[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?

"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?"

The touch was unexpected but not unwelcome. Often touch was the thing she missed the most about being back home. All of the FreakAngels had known each other since they were kids and they were used to being around one another. That meant they were used to the quirks each one had and most of them never minded Arkady leaning on them or reaching for a hand to hold. A lot of them probably wouldn't admit it, but she was pretty sure they needed it too sometimes. Bunch of messed up kids, that was what they still were.

She blinked herself back from her quick little jaunt down memory lane and turned her head to face Vincent with a gentle smile. He was an odd one. Broken in his own way just like a lot of the people here. It made her wonder what kind of information this Head could really be getting from a bunch of mixed up people.

"I'm sorry." The hint of embarrassment slipped through her voice. "Everything went dark and it surprised me. And now I'm wet." She scrunched her entire face up in annoyance at that annoyance. "What do you think is happening?"

...Well aren't you the fast one. [Fast as hell. Pretty impressive. But that's beside the point and he knows it.]

Gonna see if there's a tracker in this thing.

[He drags it further out of the way. Yeah, it's only a portion of the truth. But it's still accurate; whoever made it probably didn't want its pet project out completely unsupervised.]

How long you think it'd take to get grafts to cover a skeleton realistically, huh? Or do you think they grew this poor bastard and yanked out the bits they weren't gonna need. Like takin' the stuffing out of a doll an' puttin' somethin' new in.

[Once he has it out of the way he wrinkles his nose and stares down at it.]

"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."

( 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 ]

Edited 2019-10-22 09:34 (UTC)

"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.

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.

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?

[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?

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Page 1 of 13

we’re ready to make you one of us.

Drifter | Destiny

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Arkady | OTA

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Blackout

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this is a material world

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charles xavier | x-men movies

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David Alleyne | OTA

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Terminator Situation