Reality Coming Down - Log 7
Jan. 20th, 2015 11:04 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsThe teams regroup and try to make sense of what has happened
The only thing that Molly could say was good about this situation was that at least her friends weren't evil. Still, fighting alternate versions of themselves... again... did not make her happy. Especially an evil version of herself, who was apparently realllly evil. And even though Ty had told them to split up, for some reason evil her kept wanting to fight her.
"Just sit still! It'll be all over quick, I promise. Unless y'wanna like... I dunno, maybe help us take over the world? We can totally be supervillains!" the Mol-borg version of herself said as she chased her around a table.
Molly curled her nose. "Dude... supervillains always get defeated. I should know that. You should be helping me stop the baddies with your cool robot arm and stuff."
The chasing appeared to be making the two Mollys dizzy because they both stopped on opposite ends of the table. The Mol-Borg grinned.
"Really? You think my arm's cool? Thanks! But sorry... I can't. We have to kill you all. Dark Phoenix says so. And she's scarier than you."
Molly blinked. "DARK Phoe--?" She was cut off by the Mol-Borg suddenly rushing her, and she didn't have time to dodge as the other girl pulled a page out of Wade-Man's playbook and shoulder checked her like a linebacker, launching her through a wall. Dust and debris flew everywhere, and Molly coughed, waving it away.
"No fair," she muttered, then peeked her head back to see a familiar face on the other side of the wall.
"Oh, hey Sarah!"
"Hi Molly! How are-" Sarah stopped herself there as the surreality of it all struck her. "Um, are you... are you okay?"
She gazed through the Molly-shaped hole in the wall and saw the other Molly that had presumably knocked her through said wall.
"Oh man, they made a double of you too?" It was hard enough fighting copies of friends her age, but to have to fight a little Molly, even if she was evil? That just plain sucked even harder.
Emma glanced across to where Molly had gone through the wall, ready to throw rather a lot of resources into saving her if needed. "Molly..." she started, and then stopped. "You. Are Sarah. Doug told me once that you were like Mastermold ... you control technology, correct? Like that one." Emma pointed at her own alternate self. No matter that the Molly-bot might be stronger. It was the Emma-borg that was running this show. And no matter what she did, Emma just could not break into her own head. It wasn't shielding; whatever it was, it was in the interface between the human and the technology. And if Emma couldn't control the human part...
"I do, it's my thing." Sarah said with a shrug. "Why, what can..." She trailed off when she saw what appeared to be cyborgs, her eyes widening at the sight. "Never mind, I gotcha now."
Gathering her focus, since she was pretty sure she'd never tried to control a cyborg before and had no idea what level of tech she'd be dealing with, Sarah reached out with her powers and tried her best to communicate with the system. She didn't need complete and total control, really, just enough to make them stop attacking people would suffice for the immediate present.
Molly waited for the Mol-borg to approach, then grabbed her by the leg, yanking her off her feet. Her double let out a yelp of surprise as she flailed wildly. Jumping up, Molly's eyes glowed purple as she tried to punch the Mol-Borg in the face, but she spun out of the way at the last minute, making Molly punch a hole through the ground. Wood went everywhere, and the ground quaked.
Taking advantage of the distraction caused by Molly, Sarah redoubled her efforts and tried her best to disrupt the cyborgs en masse. It wasn't an elegant solution to say the least, akin to taking a machete to a trip a bonsai tree, but she figured brute force was the only viable option when it came to something so complicated.
She groaned with the strain on her powers, leaning against a nearby wall as she struggled. "Um, can you maybe help a little?" she asked aloud, hoping that a parallel assault by Emma on their psychic side might just give them the push they needed to succeed.
Emma dove back in again, pushing her mind into her opponents, concentrating on her alternate self. The Emma-borg noticed, turning suddenly towards her alternate. But this time, instead of her mind being a hole into which Emma fell, a bright shining bridge crossed the hole, into her other-mind. And because Emma's incursion was so unexpected, the Emma-borg's mind was completely open.
With a sigh, Emma stepped into her other-self, the flicker of history running past her, the experimentation - part-government-required, part-self-fascination, the changing and shaping of herself into a new, fabulous, better Emma. "That's what you think," said Emma and blew her other-self a kiss. "The things we could have done together..." and then reached back through Emma-borg's mind into those of the other alternate, using the telepathic link that her other-self had built, exactly as Emma would have done.
Extending telepathic fingers, Emma fitted them into the spaces between mind and machine, ready to tear them apart. She sent a quick visual to Sarah and nodded. "Ready when you are," she said and then added, "and the quicker the better," as her alternate-self came closer and closer.
***
Sue dropped her hands to her knees, letting her friends rush on past her as she sucked in a steadying breath. She'd been involved in – well, let's be honest, what had amounted to skirmishes before. This was the first time she'd ever engaged in what could honestly be described as a real battle.
It was intense! The battle had been touch and go for a bit, but now it looked like they had finally managed to get themselves an advantage, no matter how slim. It gave the blonde a chance to catch her breath and situate herself with her surroundings. Her team and Gabriel's were chasing down their fleeing doppelgangers, and she could even see movement on the other side of the wall. And was that something metallic?
A quick glance assured Sue that the others were proceeding perfectly capably without her help, or at least well enough to allow her curiosity to overcome her. Sue made her way to the hole through which she'd seen the glimpse of metal. "Oh my god! Cyborgs! That's so awesome!" Never mind that they looked just like her friends; there were real living cyborgs at the mansion. Sue was squeeing in her head right now.
Tandy was hit by RoboTandy's dagger, and though it didn't have the same affect as it might have had on others, it didn't mean it hurt any less. Holding her side, Tandy returned the favor, causing her other half to fall on the floor. She looked over to see her best friend arriving. "Sue! Stop ogling and help."
Ty bowled into RoboTandy, knocking the cyborg to slide along the ground. He felt a tug on the shadows closest to him and ducked beneath a sharp spike of darkness. His doppelganger pulled back to try again.
"I know, right?!" Molly said excitedly to Sue. Just cause they were evil didn't mean the idea of how all it worked sounded neat. Still... having those kinda parts meant stuff had to be taken away and replaced. How? She was unsquishable. She guessed the other her was too. So something had to happen to make her arm and eye be gone. That part... wasn't very neat.
Shaking off that thought quite literally with a shake of her head and curl of her nose, Molly went back to focusing on the fighting.
But this new person distracted the Mol-Borg, Molly's alternate evil self, too. She grinned at Sue.
"Oh hey, I know you! Forge killed you when he tried to make your legs metal. You fought really hard though, if that helps?"
She ripped a metal beam from the wall, then swung it at her.
"Batter up!"
Sue let a grin form on her face as she dropped into a catcher's stance, raising her hand as if to catch the swinging beam before she threw up a force field angled to the side. As the beam hit, it glanced off the forcefield, the majority of its force sliding off to the ground. Even so, the impact knocked Sue to her knees with a cough, as all the air was forced out of her lungs. Despite that, she defiantly grinned as she enclosed the metal beam in another forcefield, effectively pinning it, momentarily, to the ground.
"If I fought him that hard, what do you think I'm gonna do to you for hurting my friends?" she asked rhetorically before giving the flesh and blood Molly a wink. "Hit it for six, Molly." she encouraged.
Unobserved, a blonde figure in a blue Victorian era dress was observing the fight through the hole in the wall, "Now ganging up on someone like that, that's just unfair," she commented quietly, stepping through the hole and spearing a forcefield at Molly's head. "Hmm, still invulnerable. That could prove troublesome," she commented dryly, before sweeping a blow at the young girl's feet.
Molly didn't expect the evil version of Sue, like, at all, and actually thought it was the real one for a few moments. "Hey!" she said, the blow to her head knocking her back, but not doing much except to keep her from whacking the MolBorg, and to reinforce the fact the gravity worked. She glanced between Sue, and the evil version of herself, doing a double take.
"Oh! Hey you've got e-twin t--" she said, even as Evil Sue knocked her off her feet. Kicking back up to standing (gymnastics move for the win!), Molly grabbed a big chunk of drywall, crushing it into little bits to send dust flying everywhere as she threw the chunks at Evil Sue in an attempt to make it hard to see.
Then? She rushed her, attempting to punch her really hard in the face (but not Molly hard, just Muhammad Ali hard). She just wanted to knock her out, not kill her. Man, when they won it was gonna be really confusing having all these bad guys that looked like them.
"I like your twin better!"
Meanwhile, the MolBorg eyed Sue, then grinned, and jumped up and down, hard enough to cause the room to quake, attempting to break her concentration so she could grab the beam back.
"That's mine. I had it first."
Tandy almost lost her footing as the ground shook from the MolBorg. "What the..." She then rushed ahead to where RoboTy was using his darkness. "Would. YOU. STOP!" Instead of using her daggers she gave him a good punch to the face ,where there were no robotic parts.
Sue staggered as MolBorg continued to jump up and down on the floor. "Fine, you want it it's all yours." Sue smiled coldly as she released the beam, pushing it back at the cyborg as fast as she could. Unfortunately, the mini earthquake had weakened her stance so while the beam did end up flying back at MolBorg, Sue went sliding in the opposite direction.
"Totally meant that to happen," she muttered as she pushed herself to her feet, wincing at the scratches running down her side. "I'm gonna feel that in the morning.” She took up a braced stance and gestured at the young cyborg. "Where's all the wire when you need it?" the blonde asked the universe in general, "I could kinda do with an EMP right now."
Across the room, her alternate wasn't having much better luck. Although she'd used her forcefield to deflect the younger girl's punch, enough force had transferred across to send the blonde to the other side of the room, where she was staggering to her feet, dazed and completely unaware of what was going on around her.
Ty slid along the floor, not entirely sure who'd hit him. As he delicately brushed debris from his new scrape of road rash, he saw Amanda and Sarah with their heads together. It looked like they were hatching something. Ty pushed back into the fray to buy them time.
***
Not wanting to lose her concentration, Sarah just gave a small nod in response and then did her thing. With the cyborgs now having to deal with Emma's much more experienced and precise work, there was less resistance on Sarah's end, a fact of which she intended to take full advantage.
With the technopathic equivalent of shouting the sledgehammer to Emma's scalpel - she commanded the cyborgs' mechanical portions to shut down, to just stop working, period. Nothing fancy, so attempts to make them actually do anything, no matter how small or easy, just cease functioning, full stop. Sarah envisioned each of them having an on/off switch and she was flicking them all to off, then breaking the damn switch off.
Whatever Sarah was doing with her power, Emma couldn’t really track, but she could see the results as the empty holes, the bridges, all flickered and greyed out, leaving only minds. Not even whole minds – half minds, dreadful crippled things that had relied on their mechanical half for so long that the sudden break between the two parts left the human section flailing, desperate for something to fill the hole.
That something was Emma and she was not in the mood for mercy. The command she inserted into their minds rode over their will, their instincts, even their self-preservation.
~Tear yourself apart,~ she sent. ~Human. Machine. Separate yourself.~
Emma didn't stop looking into her other-self's mind and eyes, even when Emma-borg reached diamond hand into her own chest and pulled out her mechanical heart. It beat once, twice, in diamond fist and then was still, falling to the floor as the Emma-borg followed it, a puppet with its strings cut.
***
The first inclination any of the teenagers had that something was going wrong was a stumble. The cyborgs who had all been so relentless and sure-footed actually looked unsteady as they moved; and it wasn't just one. All of them were rocking back and forth and stumbling as they approached their opponents. "This is... different," Sue noted as she fended off punches from MolBorg that were weaker and more uncoordinated than they had ever been before. "Is it just me or are they suddenly all over the place?"
Tandy jumped back, avoiding an attack and unleashing one of her own. She saw that they were not moving how they had been a few seconds before, and she was going to use that to her advantage. "Who cares? Just bring them down."
Molly eyed EvilSue, who was wobbling like one of those dudes in the Mortal Kombat game, then rushed her, throwing a good night Gracie punch in an attempt to knock her out. The Mol-Borg seemed to be acting like she was drunk, which was not very possible. A couple of the punches she swung at Sue were completely off their mark.
"Sit...still you...blonde...per--"
Suddenly all the cyborgs seemed to seize, their bodies jerking as if they were dancing, then they all dropped to the ground, like puppets with their strings cut. The MolBorg tumbled head over heels, her eyes staring vacantly into nothing. The purple light that glowed behind them died away.
***
The tide of the battle had definitely turned.
After some quick mutterings, Gabriel and Miles had claimed the bounty on zombie-Miles, who'd been darting around with surprising longevity while his undead collaborators fell. That freed up the rest of the group to focus on their anachronistic twins.
Having her own alternate self out of the fight was a weight of Topaz's shoulder - if such a thing were possible in this situation. Of course, the three other alternates were still there and raring to fight. Not much time for relief.
"Right," she breathed. "Three of them, five of us." She was happy with those odds. Her gaze turned to the alternate Sue, who had flown through a hole in the wall and landed just a few feet away. After only a moment's hesitation, she slipped into the blonde's head, draining off her emotions with ease. She needed the extra power, and the distraction was perfect - she raised her hands, firing off a blast of energy. The forcefield around Sue buffered it, but it was still powerful enough to knock her down for a moment.
“Another one down here. Unless she’s messing with me,” Meggan quietly called out as she caught her breath. The alternate Meggan seemed to be down for the moment, provided she wasn’t faking it to lure her closer. Again. This time, a lucky kick to the forehead when they were both in the air had surprised Meggan by making the other her collapse to the ground. She was keeping her distance, just in case. It didn’t feel like a trick, but she held off getting any closer.
"If someone can help me with her..." Hope muttered as her alternate tried yet another elbow at her side, even though Hope was practically wrapped around her. "She is getting a little tiring... Stay still!" She carefully poked a little with her scissors.
Circling one of the zombies, a returned Sarah slashed out with her sword, trying to keep the creature at bay. It wasn't so stupid as to stay close enough in her range that she could easily subdue it, but she was chopping and cutting it up pretty good, especially on its arms and hands when it reached in. Which only meant the possibility of her getting infected was higher. Whoops.
She kept turning around, parrying any attacks, and looked around to see who could possibly assist her as she tried to turn the zombie back on to someone else.
Sarah had the creature's attention. Johnny jumped it from behind, clinging to its back like a monkey and slamming one hand down on its head and then the other one. He kicked at its back, bringing his feet down with every bit of his enhanced strength and it fell, Johnny still clinging to its back. He grabbed its head and twisted, rotting sinew and tendon pulling free. The head snapped at him, jaw still moving. He screamed and hurled it away.
The alternate Sue hadn't stayed down for long, of course – she was back up and on the move, and so was Topaz. Except now the witch had the upper hand – Sue was disoriented and emotionless, and Topaz had energy buzzing through her body.
The next blast had a little more power behind it than she'd intended.
It blew through Sue's (admittedly lackluster) forcefield with ease, barreling into the young woman and throwing her backwards. There was barely audible crack as her head connected with a rock. She was down.
"...Oh."
With one last zombie remaining to dispatch, Sarah steeled herself and raised her sword. She knew it was already dead, since it was a zombie after all, but still, having to kill something, or re-kill, whatever the proper term was, it wasn't an easy task for her.
There was a brief opening and she took advantage of it, thrusting out with her sword and sending the blade through the zombie's forehead. Thankfully its decomposing state made it a much easier task than otherwise, but it didn't make it any less gross and probably made it more so. Sarah pushed through as much as she could and then quickly withdrew the blade, gagging a little as she did so.
"Ohmygosh I hope that's the last of them, it is, right? Right?" She brushed the messy blade off on the rotten clothing of the recently fallen foe, which was still cleaner than her sword, then looked around to see how everyone else was faring.
After a final wary look at her duplicate revealed she was definitely down for the count, and wasn’t going to grab her ankles, Meggan flew to Hope’s aid. She aimed a kick for the duplicate’s back, hoping that she wouldn’t duck at the last second.
Alternate Hope stumbled forward, fighting for her balance and then fell forward, hitting the ground with a smack. Hope followed her, dropping to her knees, and the scissors close at hand. "Don't move." She warned sharply, but she did not have to. The piece of debris lying next to her head explained her silent, breathing form.
Looks could be deceiving though. AltHope moved suddenly, diving for the scissors Hope was still clutching. No sooner had she reclaimed them, however, then a blast of pure energy slammed into her with the force of a truck, throwing her back.
She wasn't breathing when she hit the ground.
"That's the last of them," Topaz said quietly as she lowered her hand, eyes slightly darker than usual.
Hope tried to suck in a breath as she scrambled away from the quiet form on the on floor. She glanced at it for a second as she got to her feet, but otherwise firmly turned her gaze away. "Please tell me it's over now..." She spoke softly when she finally managed to get a breath in.
Meggan was silent as she took in what had happened. She didn’t feel comfortable with alternate selves dying but didn’t want to say anything. If that was the last of them, was that it? Was it really over now? Or was there going to be a zombie Meggan walking around the grounds?
Topaz cast a gaze along the body-strewn grounds, trying not to look too long at the ones she was responsible for -- the ones wearing the faces of her friends. All was quiet, the calm after the storm.
They had won.
"Come on. We probably have to report in to somebody."
***
"Jesus fucking Christ," Gabriel threw a punch in the direction of a small, undead Nuyorican, who dodged his attack. He was drenched in sweat, and his hand still hurt like a bitch from when he'd tried to use it as zombie bait. "Kid, how is the living dead version of you so damn hard to kill?"
"Maybe I'm just that awesome in all realities," the real Miles suggested. He wasn't faring much better than Gabriel; he'd never exerted himself so much before, and he was finally discovering his limits. Limits that the zombie him didn't seem to share. "Hard to get the jump on him when he's got a spider sense. We gotta overwhelm him, sabes? So he don't know what hit him."
"Yo sé, yo sé, but easier said than done." Especially since Gabriel felt like his powers were taxed, which made any kind of shock-and-awe campaign look near impossible. He ducked the zombie's punch and tried to kick him in the chest. "My fucking hand, man."
"Tell me about it. I've never venom blasted so much before. My fingers are tingling." Miles tried to slide in under Gabriel's attack, aiming to kick zombieMiles's feet out from under him, but zombiehim was still too fast, and leaped out of reach. Even for a shuffling mass of necrosing flesh, he was fast. It terrified Miles to think about what sort of zombie virus infected him and what had happened to that world. Something he'd do anything to prevent from happening to this one.
ZombieMiles laughed as if he'd heard Miles's thoughts (and for all Miles knew, he did). "There's nothing to save here," it taunted. "You're all dead, you just don't know it yet. Give up."
"Man, shut the hell up," was Miles's clever retort as he pressed the offense again. "You're a terrible me if you think I'll go that easy. What would Peter Parker do, motherfucker?"
"Oh, Peter fucking Parker," Gabriel muttered. "Peter Parker had webs that shot out of his chingado hands. Could see that being really useful right now, really." Being able to tie up a villain in a neat little package before you kicked its ass sounded really convenient.
Gabriel decided to go for the next best thing. Despite feeling like he'd maxed out, he engaged his powers so he could speed around behind not-Miles and put him in some kind of armlock.
It was an effective tactic, with Miles throwing punch after kick after punch to keep zombiehim on its toes. It twisted in Gabriel's grip and would likely be able to free itself shortly thanks to zombie spider strength. But it was enough of a diversion to let Miles lay both hands on the zombie and discharge a pair of venom blasts. Probably the last ones of the day, considering how much energy he'd already expended, so he had to make them count.
Maybe later he could appreciate just how strong they were. ZombieMiles convulsed in Gabriel's arms, and blood gushed from its mouth after it bit its tongue clean off. "You okay?" Miles asked Gabriel as the other man let the zombie fall and continue its violent thrashing on the floor.
"Oh, sure," Gabriel said dryly. "I mean, you know. I've touched more corpse flesh than I cared to in this lifetime, and I'm 88 percent sure that I got hit on by the undead version of myself." He stomped on other-Miles' writhing hand. "But I caught sight of the Schindler's List version of myself not too long ago, so I'm thinking great day, all in all." He looked down at the bleeding thing below him. "So, this gonna kill him, or should I..."
"If you told me four months ago that we'd do this, I'd think it's pretty sweet. Clint was right, though. It kinda isn't."
The zombie stopped seizing and opened its mouth to speak. Hard to do without a tongue, but it managed to get a few words out. "More right than you think," it croaked, its glassy-eyed stare fixing on the ceiling. "No more. Dead. You all de . . ."
Its head exploded like a water balloon under the force of Miles's foot. Blood and gore splattered everywhere. They were going to need a new rug after this. And new walls. And new clothes.
"Didn't I tell him to shut up?" Miles asked, hugging his chest to stop himself from shaking so damn much.
"You did." Gabriel stared at what had been the zombie before turning. "Hey." He put his hands firmly on Miles' shoulders. Letting Miles kill a version of himself was a mistake - he shouldn't have let the anyone do that. Big leadership mistake. Had the zombie not reacted so strongly to Clint's name, he might have ended things himself.
Gabriel wanted to dwell on that a little longer, but more important things were required of him. "Hey," he said again, trying to shake the uncomfortable feeling he had. "Look. You did what you had to do. And now?" He gestured around, where there were no more zombie twins or weird-looking 19th century clones. It seemed like they'd actually pulled this off.
"I know this sucks. It totally sucks. But you know." A hint of a smile came to his lips. Realizing how inappropriate that was made it even harder for it to go away. "Peter Parker. Great power, great responsibility."
"Some Spider-Man I am." Miles shook his head and glanced down at his own mangled, desecrated corpse. "If I do die, make sure I don't turn into that. We should . . . we should make sure everyone else is okay."
***
Credit given where credit was due: Sarah's intervention had been crucial. It was to everyone's benefit that whoever programmed these cyborg clones' tech hadn't anticipated technopathy.
Sue couldn't help herself as she knelt next to one of the now-deceased cyborg's limbs, which had been thrown away from its body, its wires and components strewn about. Thanks to Sarah, the situation was resolved and safe, which left the teen with a chance to take apart the robotics in front of her while her friends dealt with the remainder of the alternates from outside. "Take a look, Tan," she gestured towards the limb with a bright smile on her face, "this is years – no, even decades ahead of our prosthetics today. Actual cyborgs. We saw actual real cyborgs."
Ty pulled the shadows close, almost obscuring him from sight. They felt less tangible, wispy in his grasp. He was definitely tiring. "One to go," he said quietly.
The Mol-Borg's cyborg out threw out a bunch of sparks, striking the ground just before her alternate self did. She was breathing hard, then... then she wasn't. Molly stared down at herself, not really saying anything for awhile.
The plan had worked, but she didn't think it'd actually make them dead, just... knocked out. Not dead. She didn't kill her, but she was still dead. Just like the other evil selves. It was them. They were dead. She wondered if they had always been evil or if they were good once.
This wasn't fun. It started off that way, sort of. The mansion was being invaded like always. Fight the bad guys. Save the day. Then get ice cream. But now it wasn't fun anymore. This wasn't the same.
Reaching down, Molly closed her eyes, then looked up at Ms. Frost the 2nd, trying her hardest not to cry. She didn't know what to say.
Emma reached out and stroked Molly's hair lightly. "I'm sorry," she said. "I wish I could make it better. But I can't. It's okay to think this is terrible, Molly." She drew the girl closer, into a gentle hug, trying to impart comfort where there was none.
Tandy looked around at the cyborg copies of themselves. "What a day." She wanted to laugh but she couldn't bring herself to that. "Decades advanced, you say? Sounds like something from a B-rated movie."
Sue glanced up before pushing herself to her knees, glancing through the adjoining wall she had walked through earlier. "It's quiet now," she noted, trying to change the subject, "Sounds like the fighting's stopped outside, we should probably go check on the others."
Ty bent double, breathing heavily. He glanced up at Sue. "That's great, can we maybe take a second to not fall over?"
Emma looked up from Molly and did a quick headcount, relieved that everyone seemed to have survived the onslaught. "Nobody died" wasn't normally the kind of goal she felt the need to articulate before going on a mission, but with the way things had been going, it had gained a new importance.
"Not even a B-grade movie," she said to Tandy, trying to lighten the mood somehow, draw the team's attention away from the fact that they had, once again, just killed versions of themselves. Seeing your own dead face, even altered, was not something that you could take lightly. "Some kind of Z-grade schlock horror like Robot Santas Take Over Mars. Or Vixen Pussycat Robots From Jupiter. We may have to have a movie night when this is all over and I can introduce you to bad 1960s schlock movies."
If it was over. Emma didn't say it out loud, but she was fairly certain that this was not even close to over.
The only thing that Molly could say was good about this situation was that at least her friends weren't evil. Still, fighting alternate versions of themselves... again... did not make her happy. Especially an evil version of herself, who was apparently realllly evil. And even though Ty had told them to split up, for some reason evil her kept wanting to fight her.
"Just sit still! It'll be all over quick, I promise. Unless y'wanna like... I dunno, maybe help us take over the world? We can totally be supervillains!" the Mol-borg version of herself said as she chased her around a table.
Molly curled her nose. "Dude... supervillains always get defeated. I should know that. You should be helping me stop the baddies with your cool robot arm and stuff."
The chasing appeared to be making the two Mollys dizzy because they both stopped on opposite ends of the table. The Mol-Borg grinned.
"Really? You think my arm's cool? Thanks! But sorry... I can't. We have to kill you all. Dark Phoenix says so. And she's scarier than you."
Molly blinked. "DARK Phoe--?" She was cut off by the Mol-Borg suddenly rushing her, and she didn't have time to dodge as the other girl pulled a page out of Wade-Man's playbook and shoulder checked her like a linebacker, launching her through a wall. Dust and debris flew everywhere, and Molly coughed, waving it away.
"No fair," she muttered, then peeked her head back to see a familiar face on the other side of the wall.
"Oh, hey Sarah!"
"Hi Molly! How are-" Sarah stopped herself there as the surreality of it all struck her. "Um, are you... are you okay?"
She gazed through the Molly-shaped hole in the wall and saw the other Molly that had presumably knocked her through said wall.
"Oh man, they made a double of you too?" It was hard enough fighting copies of friends her age, but to have to fight a little Molly, even if she was evil? That just plain sucked even harder.
Emma glanced across to where Molly had gone through the wall, ready to throw rather a lot of resources into saving her if needed. "Molly..." she started, and then stopped. "You. Are Sarah. Doug told me once that you were like Mastermold ... you control technology, correct? Like that one." Emma pointed at her own alternate self. No matter that the Molly-bot might be stronger. It was the Emma-borg that was running this show. And no matter what she did, Emma just could not break into her own head. It wasn't shielding; whatever it was, it was in the interface between the human and the technology. And if Emma couldn't control the human part...
"I do, it's my thing." Sarah said with a shrug. "Why, what can..." She trailed off when she saw what appeared to be cyborgs, her eyes widening at the sight. "Never mind, I gotcha now."
Gathering her focus, since she was pretty sure she'd never tried to control a cyborg before and had no idea what level of tech she'd be dealing with, Sarah reached out with her powers and tried her best to communicate with the system. She didn't need complete and total control, really, just enough to make them stop attacking people would suffice for the immediate present.
Molly waited for the Mol-borg to approach, then grabbed her by the leg, yanking her off her feet. Her double let out a yelp of surprise as she flailed wildly. Jumping up, Molly's eyes glowed purple as she tried to punch the Mol-Borg in the face, but she spun out of the way at the last minute, making Molly punch a hole through the ground. Wood went everywhere, and the ground quaked.
Taking advantage of the distraction caused by Molly, Sarah redoubled her efforts and tried her best to disrupt the cyborgs en masse. It wasn't an elegant solution to say the least, akin to taking a machete to a trip a bonsai tree, but she figured brute force was the only viable option when it came to something so complicated.
She groaned with the strain on her powers, leaning against a nearby wall as she struggled. "Um, can you maybe help a little?" she asked aloud, hoping that a parallel assault by Emma on their psychic side might just give them the push they needed to succeed.
Emma dove back in again, pushing her mind into her opponents, concentrating on her alternate self. The Emma-borg noticed, turning suddenly towards her alternate. But this time, instead of her mind being a hole into which Emma fell, a bright shining bridge crossed the hole, into her other-mind. And because Emma's incursion was so unexpected, the Emma-borg's mind was completely open.
With a sigh, Emma stepped into her other-self, the flicker of history running past her, the experimentation - part-government-required, part-self-fascination, the changing and shaping of herself into a new, fabulous, better Emma. "That's what you think," said Emma and blew her other-self a kiss. "The things we could have done together..." and then reached back through Emma-borg's mind into those of the other alternate, using the telepathic link that her other-self had built, exactly as Emma would have done.
Extending telepathic fingers, Emma fitted them into the spaces between mind and machine, ready to tear them apart. She sent a quick visual to Sarah and nodded. "Ready when you are," she said and then added, "and the quicker the better," as her alternate-self came closer and closer.
***
Sue dropped her hands to her knees, letting her friends rush on past her as she sucked in a steadying breath. She'd been involved in – well, let's be honest, what had amounted to skirmishes before. This was the first time she'd ever engaged in what could honestly be described as a real battle.
It was intense! The battle had been touch and go for a bit, but now it looked like they had finally managed to get themselves an advantage, no matter how slim. It gave the blonde a chance to catch her breath and situate herself with her surroundings. Her team and Gabriel's were chasing down their fleeing doppelgangers, and she could even see movement on the other side of the wall. And was that something metallic?
A quick glance assured Sue that the others were proceeding perfectly capably without her help, or at least well enough to allow her curiosity to overcome her. Sue made her way to the hole through which she'd seen the glimpse of metal. "Oh my god! Cyborgs! That's so awesome!" Never mind that they looked just like her friends; there were real living cyborgs at the mansion. Sue was squeeing in her head right now.
Tandy was hit by RoboTandy's dagger, and though it didn't have the same affect as it might have had on others, it didn't mean it hurt any less. Holding her side, Tandy returned the favor, causing her other half to fall on the floor. She looked over to see her best friend arriving. "Sue! Stop ogling and help."
Ty bowled into RoboTandy, knocking the cyborg to slide along the ground. He felt a tug on the shadows closest to him and ducked beneath a sharp spike of darkness. His doppelganger pulled back to try again.
"I know, right?!" Molly said excitedly to Sue. Just cause they were evil didn't mean the idea of how all it worked sounded neat. Still... having those kinda parts meant stuff had to be taken away and replaced. How? She was unsquishable. She guessed the other her was too. So something had to happen to make her arm and eye be gone. That part... wasn't very neat.
Shaking off that thought quite literally with a shake of her head and curl of her nose, Molly went back to focusing on the fighting.
But this new person distracted the Mol-Borg, Molly's alternate evil self, too. She grinned at Sue.
"Oh hey, I know you! Forge killed you when he tried to make your legs metal. You fought really hard though, if that helps?"
She ripped a metal beam from the wall, then swung it at her.
"Batter up!"
Sue let a grin form on her face as she dropped into a catcher's stance, raising her hand as if to catch the swinging beam before she threw up a force field angled to the side. As the beam hit, it glanced off the forcefield, the majority of its force sliding off to the ground. Even so, the impact knocked Sue to her knees with a cough, as all the air was forced out of her lungs. Despite that, she defiantly grinned as she enclosed the metal beam in another forcefield, effectively pinning it, momentarily, to the ground.
"If I fought him that hard, what do you think I'm gonna do to you for hurting my friends?" she asked rhetorically before giving the flesh and blood Molly a wink. "Hit it for six, Molly." she encouraged.
Unobserved, a blonde figure in a blue Victorian era dress was observing the fight through the hole in the wall, "Now ganging up on someone like that, that's just unfair," she commented quietly, stepping through the hole and spearing a forcefield at Molly's head. "Hmm, still invulnerable. That could prove troublesome," she commented dryly, before sweeping a blow at the young girl's feet.
Molly didn't expect the evil version of Sue, like, at all, and actually thought it was the real one for a few moments. "Hey!" she said, the blow to her head knocking her back, but not doing much except to keep her from whacking the MolBorg, and to reinforce the fact the gravity worked. She glanced between Sue, and the evil version of herself, doing a double take.
"Oh! Hey you've got e-twin t--" she said, even as Evil Sue knocked her off her feet. Kicking back up to standing (gymnastics move for the win!), Molly grabbed a big chunk of drywall, crushing it into little bits to send dust flying everywhere as she threw the chunks at Evil Sue in an attempt to make it hard to see.
Then? She rushed her, attempting to punch her really hard in the face (but not Molly hard, just Muhammad Ali hard). She just wanted to knock her out, not kill her. Man, when they won it was gonna be really confusing having all these bad guys that looked like them.
"I like your twin better!"
Meanwhile, the MolBorg eyed Sue, then grinned, and jumped up and down, hard enough to cause the room to quake, attempting to break her concentration so she could grab the beam back.
"That's mine. I had it first."
Tandy almost lost her footing as the ground shook from the MolBorg. "What the..." She then rushed ahead to where RoboTy was using his darkness. "Would. YOU. STOP!" Instead of using her daggers she gave him a good punch to the face ,where there were no robotic parts.
Sue staggered as MolBorg continued to jump up and down on the floor. "Fine, you want it it's all yours." Sue smiled coldly as she released the beam, pushing it back at the cyborg as fast as she could. Unfortunately, the mini earthquake had weakened her stance so while the beam did end up flying back at MolBorg, Sue went sliding in the opposite direction.
"Totally meant that to happen," she muttered as she pushed herself to her feet, wincing at the scratches running down her side. "I'm gonna feel that in the morning.” She took up a braced stance and gestured at the young cyborg. "Where's all the wire when you need it?" the blonde asked the universe in general, "I could kinda do with an EMP right now."
Across the room, her alternate wasn't having much better luck. Although she'd used her forcefield to deflect the younger girl's punch, enough force had transferred across to send the blonde to the other side of the room, where she was staggering to her feet, dazed and completely unaware of what was going on around her.
Ty slid along the floor, not entirely sure who'd hit him. As he delicately brushed debris from his new scrape of road rash, he saw Amanda and Sarah with their heads together. It looked like they were hatching something. Ty pushed back into the fray to buy them time.
***
Not wanting to lose her concentration, Sarah just gave a small nod in response and then did her thing. With the cyborgs now having to deal with Emma's much more experienced and precise work, there was less resistance on Sarah's end, a fact of which she intended to take full advantage.
With the technopathic equivalent of shouting the sledgehammer to Emma's scalpel - she commanded the cyborgs' mechanical portions to shut down, to just stop working, period. Nothing fancy, so attempts to make them actually do anything, no matter how small or easy, just cease functioning, full stop. Sarah envisioned each of them having an on/off switch and she was flicking them all to off, then breaking the damn switch off.
Whatever Sarah was doing with her power, Emma couldn’t really track, but she could see the results as the empty holes, the bridges, all flickered and greyed out, leaving only minds. Not even whole minds – half minds, dreadful crippled things that had relied on their mechanical half for so long that the sudden break between the two parts left the human section flailing, desperate for something to fill the hole.
That something was Emma and she was not in the mood for mercy. The command she inserted into their minds rode over their will, their instincts, even their self-preservation.
~Tear yourself apart,~ she sent. ~Human. Machine. Separate yourself.~
Emma didn't stop looking into her other-self's mind and eyes, even when Emma-borg reached diamond hand into her own chest and pulled out her mechanical heart. It beat once, twice, in diamond fist and then was still, falling to the floor as the Emma-borg followed it, a puppet with its strings cut.
***
The first inclination any of the teenagers had that something was going wrong was a stumble. The cyborgs who had all been so relentless and sure-footed actually looked unsteady as they moved; and it wasn't just one. All of them were rocking back and forth and stumbling as they approached their opponents. "This is... different," Sue noted as she fended off punches from MolBorg that were weaker and more uncoordinated than they had ever been before. "Is it just me or are they suddenly all over the place?"
Tandy jumped back, avoiding an attack and unleashing one of her own. She saw that they were not moving how they had been a few seconds before, and she was going to use that to her advantage. "Who cares? Just bring them down."
Molly eyed EvilSue, who was wobbling like one of those dudes in the Mortal Kombat game, then rushed her, throwing a good night Gracie punch in an attempt to knock her out. The Mol-Borg seemed to be acting like she was drunk, which was not very possible. A couple of the punches she swung at Sue were completely off their mark.
"Sit...still you...blonde...per--"
Suddenly all the cyborgs seemed to seize, their bodies jerking as if they were dancing, then they all dropped to the ground, like puppets with their strings cut. The MolBorg tumbled head over heels, her eyes staring vacantly into nothing. The purple light that glowed behind them died away.
***
The tide of the battle had definitely turned.
After some quick mutterings, Gabriel and Miles had claimed the bounty on zombie-Miles, who'd been darting around with surprising longevity while his undead collaborators fell. That freed up the rest of the group to focus on their anachronistic twins.
Having her own alternate self out of the fight was a weight of Topaz's shoulder - if such a thing were possible in this situation. Of course, the three other alternates were still there and raring to fight. Not much time for relief.
"Right," she breathed. "Three of them, five of us." She was happy with those odds. Her gaze turned to the alternate Sue, who had flown through a hole in the wall and landed just a few feet away. After only a moment's hesitation, she slipped into the blonde's head, draining off her emotions with ease. She needed the extra power, and the distraction was perfect - she raised her hands, firing off a blast of energy. The forcefield around Sue buffered it, but it was still powerful enough to knock her down for a moment.
“Another one down here. Unless she’s messing with me,” Meggan quietly called out as she caught her breath. The alternate Meggan seemed to be down for the moment, provided she wasn’t faking it to lure her closer. Again. This time, a lucky kick to the forehead when they were both in the air had surprised Meggan by making the other her collapse to the ground. She was keeping her distance, just in case. It didn’t feel like a trick, but she held off getting any closer.
"If someone can help me with her..." Hope muttered as her alternate tried yet another elbow at her side, even though Hope was practically wrapped around her. "She is getting a little tiring... Stay still!" She carefully poked a little with her scissors.
Circling one of the zombies, a returned Sarah slashed out with her sword, trying to keep the creature at bay. It wasn't so stupid as to stay close enough in her range that she could easily subdue it, but she was chopping and cutting it up pretty good, especially on its arms and hands when it reached in. Which only meant the possibility of her getting infected was higher. Whoops.
She kept turning around, parrying any attacks, and looked around to see who could possibly assist her as she tried to turn the zombie back on to someone else.
Sarah had the creature's attention. Johnny jumped it from behind, clinging to its back like a monkey and slamming one hand down on its head and then the other one. He kicked at its back, bringing his feet down with every bit of his enhanced strength and it fell, Johnny still clinging to its back. He grabbed its head and twisted, rotting sinew and tendon pulling free. The head snapped at him, jaw still moving. He screamed and hurled it away.
The alternate Sue hadn't stayed down for long, of course – she was back up and on the move, and so was Topaz. Except now the witch had the upper hand – Sue was disoriented and emotionless, and Topaz had energy buzzing through her body.
The next blast had a little more power behind it than she'd intended.
It blew through Sue's (admittedly lackluster) forcefield with ease, barreling into the young woman and throwing her backwards. There was barely audible crack as her head connected with a rock. She was down.
"...Oh."
With one last zombie remaining to dispatch, Sarah steeled herself and raised her sword. She knew it was already dead, since it was a zombie after all, but still, having to kill something, or re-kill, whatever the proper term was, it wasn't an easy task for her.
There was a brief opening and she took advantage of it, thrusting out with her sword and sending the blade through the zombie's forehead. Thankfully its decomposing state made it a much easier task than otherwise, but it didn't make it any less gross and probably made it more so. Sarah pushed through as much as she could and then quickly withdrew the blade, gagging a little as she did so.
"Ohmygosh I hope that's the last of them, it is, right? Right?" She brushed the messy blade off on the rotten clothing of the recently fallen foe, which was still cleaner than her sword, then looked around to see how everyone else was faring.
After a final wary look at her duplicate revealed she was definitely down for the count, and wasn’t going to grab her ankles, Meggan flew to Hope’s aid. She aimed a kick for the duplicate’s back, hoping that she wouldn’t duck at the last second.
Alternate Hope stumbled forward, fighting for her balance and then fell forward, hitting the ground with a smack. Hope followed her, dropping to her knees, and the scissors close at hand. "Don't move." She warned sharply, but she did not have to. The piece of debris lying next to her head explained her silent, breathing form.
Looks could be deceiving though. AltHope moved suddenly, diving for the scissors Hope was still clutching. No sooner had she reclaimed them, however, then a blast of pure energy slammed into her with the force of a truck, throwing her back.
She wasn't breathing when she hit the ground.
"That's the last of them," Topaz said quietly as she lowered her hand, eyes slightly darker than usual.
Hope tried to suck in a breath as she scrambled away from the quiet form on the on floor. She glanced at it for a second as she got to her feet, but otherwise firmly turned her gaze away. "Please tell me it's over now..." She spoke softly when she finally managed to get a breath in.
Meggan was silent as she took in what had happened. She didn’t feel comfortable with alternate selves dying but didn’t want to say anything. If that was the last of them, was that it? Was it really over now? Or was there going to be a zombie Meggan walking around the grounds?
Topaz cast a gaze along the body-strewn grounds, trying not to look too long at the ones she was responsible for -- the ones wearing the faces of her friends. All was quiet, the calm after the storm.
They had won.
"Come on. We probably have to report in to somebody."
***
"Jesus fucking Christ," Gabriel threw a punch in the direction of a small, undead Nuyorican, who dodged his attack. He was drenched in sweat, and his hand still hurt like a bitch from when he'd tried to use it as zombie bait. "Kid, how is the living dead version of you so damn hard to kill?"
"Maybe I'm just that awesome in all realities," the real Miles suggested. He wasn't faring much better than Gabriel; he'd never exerted himself so much before, and he was finally discovering his limits. Limits that the zombie him didn't seem to share. "Hard to get the jump on him when he's got a spider sense. We gotta overwhelm him, sabes? So he don't know what hit him."
"Yo sé, yo sé, but easier said than done." Especially since Gabriel felt like his powers were taxed, which made any kind of shock-and-awe campaign look near impossible. He ducked the zombie's punch and tried to kick him in the chest. "My fucking hand, man."
"Tell me about it. I've never venom blasted so much before. My fingers are tingling." Miles tried to slide in under Gabriel's attack, aiming to kick zombieMiles's feet out from under him, but zombiehim was still too fast, and leaped out of reach. Even for a shuffling mass of necrosing flesh, he was fast. It terrified Miles to think about what sort of zombie virus infected him and what had happened to that world. Something he'd do anything to prevent from happening to this one.
ZombieMiles laughed as if he'd heard Miles's thoughts (and for all Miles knew, he did). "There's nothing to save here," it taunted. "You're all dead, you just don't know it yet. Give up."
"Man, shut the hell up," was Miles's clever retort as he pressed the offense again. "You're a terrible me if you think I'll go that easy. What would Peter Parker do, motherfucker?"
"Oh, Peter fucking Parker," Gabriel muttered. "Peter Parker had webs that shot out of his chingado hands. Could see that being really useful right now, really." Being able to tie up a villain in a neat little package before you kicked its ass sounded really convenient.
Gabriel decided to go for the next best thing. Despite feeling like he'd maxed out, he engaged his powers so he could speed around behind not-Miles and put him in some kind of armlock.
It was an effective tactic, with Miles throwing punch after kick after punch to keep zombiehim on its toes. It twisted in Gabriel's grip and would likely be able to free itself shortly thanks to zombie spider strength. But it was enough of a diversion to let Miles lay both hands on the zombie and discharge a pair of venom blasts. Probably the last ones of the day, considering how much energy he'd already expended, so he had to make them count.
Maybe later he could appreciate just how strong they were. ZombieMiles convulsed in Gabriel's arms, and blood gushed from its mouth after it bit its tongue clean off. "You okay?" Miles asked Gabriel as the other man let the zombie fall and continue its violent thrashing on the floor.
"Oh, sure," Gabriel said dryly. "I mean, you know. I've touched more corpse flesh than I cared to in this lifetime, and I'm 88 percent sure that I got hit on by the undead version of myself." He stomped on other-Miles' writhing hand. "But I caught sight of the Schindler's List version of myself not too long ago, so I'm thinking great day, all in all." He looked down at the bleeding thing below him. "So, this gonna kill him, or should I..."
"If you told me four months ago that we'd do this, I'd think it's pretty sweet. Clint was right, though. It kinda isn't."
The zombie stopped seizing and opened its mouth to speak. Hard to do without a tongue, but it managed to get a few words out. "More right than you think," it croaked, its glassy-eyed stare fixing on the ceiling. "No more. Dead. You all de . . ."
Its head exploded like a water balloon under the force of Miles's foot. Blood and gore splattered everywhere. They were going to need a new rug after this. And new walls. And new clothes.
"Didn't I tell him to shut up?" Miles asked, hugging his chest to stop himself from shaking so damn much.
"You did." Gabriel stared at what had been the zombie before turning. "Hey." He put his hands firmly on Miles' shoulders. Letting Miles kill a version of himself was a mistake - he shouldn't have let the anyone do that. Big leadership mistake. Had the zombie not reacted so strongly to Clint's name, he might have ended things himself.
Gabriel wanted to dwell on that a little longer, but more important things were required of him. "Hey," he said again, trying to shake the uncomfortable feeling he had. "Look. You did what you had to do. And now?" He gestured around, where there were no more zombie twins or weird-looking 19th century clones. It seemed like they'd actually pulled this off.
"I know this sucks. It totally sucks. But you know." A hint of a smile came to his lips. Realizing how inappropriate that was made it even harder for it to go away. "Peter Parker. Great power, great responsibility."
"Some Spider-Man I am." Miles shook his head and glanced down at his own mangled, desecrated corpse. "If I do die, make sure I don't turn into that. We should . . . we should make sure everyone else is okay."
***
Credit given where credit was due: Sarah's intervention had been crucial. It was to everyone's benefit that whoever programmed these cyborg clones' tech hadn't anticipated technopathy.
Sue couldn't help herself as she knelt next to one of the now-deceased cyborg's limbs, which had been thrown away from its body, its wires and components strewn about. Thanks to Sarah, the situation was resolved and safe, which left the teen with a chance to take apart the robotics in front of her while her friends dealt with the remainder of the alternates from outside. "Take a look, Tan," she gestured towards the limb with a bright smile on her face, "this is years – no, even decades ahead of our prosthetics today. Actual cyborgs. We saw actual real cyborgs."
Ty pulled the shadows close, almost obscuring him from sight. They felt less tangible, wispy in his grasp. He was definitely tiring. "One to go," he said quietly.
The Mol-Borg's cyborg out threw out a bunch of sparks, striking the ground just before her alternate self did. She was breathing hard, then... then she wasn't. Molly stared down at herself, not really saying anything for awhile.
The plan had worked, but she didn't think it'd actually make them dead, just... knocked out. Not dead. She didn't kill her, but she was still dead. Just like the other evil selves. It was them. They were dead. She wondered if they had always been evil or if they were good once.
This wasn't fun. It started off that way, sort of. The mansion was being invaded like always. Fight the bad guys. Save the day. Then get ice cream. But now it wasn't fun anymore. This wasn't the same.
Reaching down, Molly closed her eyes, then looked up at Ms. Frost the 2nd, trying her hardest not to cry. She didn't know what to say.
Emma reached out and stroked Molly's hair lightly. "I'm sorry," she said. "I wish I could make it better. But I can't. It's okay to think this is terrible, Molly." She drew the girl closer, into a gentle hug, trying to impart comfort where there was none.
Tandy looked around at the cyborg copies of themselves. "What a day." She wanted to laugh but she couldn't bring herself to that. "Decades advanced, you say? Sounds like something from a B-rated movie."
Sue glanced up before pushing herself to her knees, glancing through the adjoining wall she had walked through earlier. "It's quiet now," she noted, trying to change the subject, "Sounds like the fighting's stopped outside, we should probably go check on the others."
Ty bent double, breathing heavily. He glanced up at Sue. "That's great, can we maybe take a second to not fall over?"
Emma looked up from Molly and did a quick headcount, relieved that everyone seemed to have survived the onslaught. "Nobody died" wasn't normally the kind of goal she felt the need to articulate before going on a mission, but with the way things had been going, it had gained a new importance.
"Not even a B-grade movie," she said to Tandy, trying to lighten the mood somehow, draw the team's attention away from the fact that they had, once again, just killed versions of themselves. Seeing your own dead face, even altered, was not something that you could take lightly. "Some kind of Z-grade schlock horror like Robot Santas Take Over Mars. Or Vixen Pussycat Robots From Jupiter. We may have to have a movie night when this is all over and I can introduce you to bad 1960s schlock movies."
If it was over. Emma didn't say it out loud, but she was fairly certain that this was not even close to over.
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