Heh heh heh heh heh Hihihi Ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! Welcome readers! Welcome to my valentines day one shot!

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A smirk pulled at the edges of Dr. Clone's lips, as he took a leisurely stroll through the blank white corridors of the FFDN company. The bottom hem of his lab coat swirled and flapped around his feet as he walked, one foot in front of the other. He'd not been in the Loud division for very long, but he liked to think that he'd made a difference in the short time since his transfer from the Uzumaki division; where he'd been a relative nobody. A talented nobody, but a nobody none the less. In the Loud division people knew him. He had friends, fans, employees… It was a shame it all had to end sooner or later. They couldn't keep doing what they were doing forever… He couldn't keep doing what he was doing forever.

He stopped before a patch of wall, indistinguishable from the rest of the hallway, with the exception that there was a number pad embedded, ready to accept a code. A code that he readily provided. Seems formed in the wall, where they had been solid before, and a section slid away to reveal the entrance to his very own office. His own little home away from home, decorated with personal effects to reflect his time on the job, and his various accomplishments. He ambled in, moving around his desk and sitting in the swivel chair on the other side. He booted up his laptop, and opened some files… They were complete… He stared at them, his hand hovering over the button to download them onto an inserted USB drive, as he'd done every day for the last week.

He looked up as a buzzer went off. Looking at a feed that showed the entrance to his office, he saw one of his employees. His favorite one, standing there shuffling awkwardly while they waited to be let in, or turned away. Dr. Clone made a decision in that moment.

"Wait a moment and I'll let you in." He announced over the speaker. "I have to do something first." He brought his finger down to press the download button, and waited thirty seconds for it to complete. Unplugging the USB drive from his laptop, he slipped it into his pocket, before opening a desk drawer and doing the same with a small plastic card. "Alright, come in." He clicked a key to reopen the door, and his most deserving employee stepped through, looking nervously around, before coming to attention in front of his desk.

"Researcher Lurker." Dr. Clone greeted, spreading his arms magnanimously. "I'm always happy to see my most adorable assistant. What brings you before me today?"

Researcher Lurker coughed into his fist, looking away and blushing in embarrassment. Though Dr. Clone wasn't sure what to think of Researcher Lurker, when he first met the other man, he'd quickly grown to like him. Lurker was an eager study. In this place, that normally would have been an insult, coming from Dr. Clone, but with Lurker it wasn't. Researcher Lurker was curious, creative, and experimental, but he held on to his moral compass, despite the company pressuring him. Dr. Clone was worried that Lurker may have been buckling under the demands of the higher ups though. His most recent project was borderline. It was part of the reason Dr. Clone was doing what he was doing, other than the simple moral goodness of it, he didn't want to see Researcher Lurker ruined by the company. Lurker still had the potential to be a good man, and Dr. Clone wanted to give him the chance.

"Dr. Flagg and Dr. Script told me to come get you." Lurker adorably held his clipboard up to cover the lower half of his face, obscuring his blush from view. "It's… Well, given the day it is tomorrow, they wanted to do something big, and they're asking for your input."

They were? Huh… That was kind of flattering actually. He may have been on good terms with the other two doctors, but he was still the newcomer. The fact that they wanted his input was… It made him wish he didn't have to do what he had to do. It made him wish they didn't have to get what was coming to them… Damn it. He'd made himself sad.

"Well, let's not keep them waiting." Dr. Clone put on a false smile, so as not to worry his assistant, and rose from his desk.

Slipping his hands into his pockets, he fingered the card and the drive, reassuring himself of their presence. Sweeping past Researcher Lurker, he led his assistant down nondescript hallway, after nondescript hallway, passing other doctors and researchers occasionally on the way.

"Ha ha. Yeah." He heard one say to another, as they approached him in the hall. "Did you hear?"

"What?" The other prompted.

"The smart one. With the glasses?"

"Yeah?"

"She built another tablet computer out of scrap she's been able to scrounge up."

"So? She does that all the time." The other returned.

"Yeah, but this one can access the internet. She's been using it to try to hack into the company's system."

"Oh, wow." The other remarked. "That IS impressive."

"I know right?" The first chuckled. "It doesn't matter of course. She needs a whole host of passwords to get anywhere, and we change them every day. There's no way she's hacking anything… Still, it's hilarious, because it's my turn to sweep their room for contraband, and I was thinking about how I can get the most out of this."

"Yeah?" The other spurred him on.

"Right. So I was thinking. I'll do the entire search and pretend that I didn't find anything. Then, at the end, when I'm about to leave and they think they've gotten away with it. I'll whip around and pull it from it's hiding spot. It'll be awesome. I'll get to see their hope come crashing down around them."

The two continued talking, fading into the distance behind him.

"You think they'll attack me? If they do I'll get to use my stick and then…" was the last Dr. Clone heard, as he marched ever forward.

His jaw set. It was things like that, that forced him to do this.

He gazed dead ahead until he reached the examination room, adjacent to the holding cell of the core subjects. The eleven main… Participants, to avoid less savory terms. Dr. Flagg and Dr. Script were standing before the observation window, talking among themselves. They looked up when he walked in, and waved him over, smiles spread across their faces. Before joining them though, Dr. Clone turned back to Researcher Lurker.

"Here, take this." He reached into his pocket and retrieved the plastic card, handing it to his assistant and closing their hand around it.

"Wha?" Lurker looked down at the innocuous square of plastic. It was a clearance card for an escape pod.

"Just… Keep it." Dr. Clone turned to go, glancing back at his assistant over his shoulder. "I've had it for a while and… I just have a feeling you'll be needing it today.

Dr. Clone faced forward again, and greeted his fellows as he joined them for a day of work, that if all went well, would soon come to naught.

He talked and planned and discussed possibilities with the other two for hours, before they were done for the day, and it was time to end.

"You guys go on ahead." Dr. Clone told them. "I have something I want to check before I close for the night." He waved as they left. "See you both tomorrow." He lied.

Breathing out a sigh, Clone's shoulders slumped, before he straightened himself back up. Slipping his hand back into his pocket, he checked for the drive, before walking over to the gate that led into the chamber containing the subjects holding cell. He punched in the code, and moved to the door of the cell. He tapped on the glass.

…

Wrong. Try again, wrong. Another time, wrong. Come on, wrong. Please, wrong. Keep going, wrong. She had to hurry, wrong. She, she didn't think she could go through it again, wrong. She didn't think her siblings could go through it again, wrong. She NEEDED to do this NOW! Wrong. Nothing was working, wrong. All her attempts were failures, wrong. She'd failed her family, wrong.

There was a tap on the glass. Lisa looked up from her attempts to crack the FFDN system passwords, hastily storing her tablet away even though she knew it was probably too late. Whoever had tapped on the glass already saw it.

One of the doctors was standing there, his shoulder length hair combed back, and held back by a hair band. Dr. Clone. She recognized him. She knew him despite his relative newness. He had a kind smile on his face, that made her blood boil. How dare he look at her that way, after everything he did to them. He'd not been their long, but he'd made his mark. Lisa despised him. She hated him, just as she hated the organization that kept them captive.

He nodded at her, and pulled something from his pocket. He slid open the food slot and dropped it through. Lisa watched as it clattered to the ground. Dr. Clone waved with just his hand, then stuck both hands in his pockets and walked away.

Lisa waited until she couldn't see him before she picked up what he'd dropped. It was a small USB drive, which she immediately plugged into her tablet. There was a chance it was a trap, of course, but Lisa honestly didn't have anything to lose at this point. She opened the folder that appeared when the drive was plugged in, and stared… This was. Abruptly opening her previous tab, she typed the newly acquired code into the password bar. A seemingly random string of symbols, letters, and numbers. Right, access granted.

Lisa was conflicted. That man… Dr. Clone. He'd done horrible things to Lisa and her siblings, but he'd also just given her the key to their freedom… Not just their freedom, but the freedom of every prisoner trapped by the company… She… She'd think on this later. She had a job to do now.

Menus and links. Additional passwords, quickly bypassed with a peak at the drive held files. Lisa typed up some code, and set everything up. A beautiful domino effect. A click of a button and almost every door, in the entire facility, opened at the same time.

Her siblings perked up from their haze, before, as one, bursting through the cell door. Red flashing lights. Blaring alarms. workers and employees rushing about in a panic. It was chaos. Lisa turned back to her family, looking them each in the eye, and knew without speaking that escape wasn't enough. Those that hurt them needed to pay.

A quick search on her tablet and they were all armed. Another search linked her to the security cameras throughout the facility. Something caught her eye. A hoard of scrabbling bodies, crawling along like the living dead. A group of rejects that she recognized as their children. Slated to be put down, but kept alive for the cruel purposes of Dr. Flagg. Unwanted though they may have been, Lisa couldn't help but love them. At least one of them was hers, and all of them were Lincoln's. She knew he felt the same.

She… She couldn't leave them. They deserved some closure too. Not pausing in her directions to her siblings, she began making small changes to the rejects path. Opening doors here, closing them elsewhere. Guiding them to where they could get what they deserved, and allowing them to pick up tools along the way.

With her help, they quickly caught up with the man responsible for their continued existence and suffering. The large man ran, of course. Back to his office. The hoard rampaged after him, bursting through the door, just as he hit the button to close it. And Lisa suppressed a grimace and a wince, as poor crippled Lupa's legs were crushed by the closing gate. Her screech of agony was almost inhuman, as she fell face first to the floor and sobbed into the hard surface. Even with labored breath, she pushed herself up with her hands and glared her hatred at the man cowering against his desk.

"Please." The man whimpered pathetically. "Have mercy!" He begged.

There was none to be had. Lacy, Lyra, and Lizzy dragged him forward, holding him down, despite his struggles. Leia cackled as she doused them in chemicals, not bothering to miss either herself or her sisters, as she covered the pleading man. And Lemy sparked a lighter, gazing into the flickering flame, even as he fell forward and.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHIIIIIEEIEEIEEIEIIIEIEIEEIE" The Doctor screamed, thrashing against those holding him, who continued to do so in spite of their own bubbling flesh.

Lisa was no stranger to death, having been killed and revived by the company time and time again, but even so, she couldn't watch anymore. There would be no reviving for Lemy and his sisters. She flipped away from the feed, and focused completely on guiding her siblings, until they found their next target.

Dr. Script, swiping a card through a reader and being rejected every time. He was desperate. Their feet scuffled the ground as they approached and Dr. Script spun around to see them. His face whitening, until he saw Leni. He lurched forward, reaching out to her.

"Leni!" He called hysterically. "My love! You're here!"

"Shut up." Leni hissed, stepping forward. "You don't love me."

"What are you talking about, of course I do." His eyes were wild as insanity, normally kept under the surface, seeped through the cracks, created by stress. "You're my Halloweenietine. That means everything to me."

Shadows covered Leni's hate filled eyes. Her hand slipping behind her and gripping a knife out of his sight.

"It means nothing. If you loved me, you would have helped us escape years ago." She countered, taking another step towards him.

"I didn't want us to be separated." He claimed.

"If you love me, you wouldn't have put me through everything you did." Another step.

"I always put you back to the way you were, no harm done."

"If you loved me, you would have searched for me when the alarms started going off." She was right in front of him now.

"I was panicked. I wasn't thinking. We can escape together now though." He waved to the card reader.

"If you love me, I wouldn't be able to bring myself to do this." Leni's hand surged forward.

"Wha-" His question turned into a choke, as five inches of sharpened steel plunged into his gut.

Hands shaking, he looked down at the handle in Leni's hand, as crimson bloomed around his injury. Bracing the handle with her other hand, Leni jerked the knife up, hammering away at it, until the blade was stopped by his rib cage. Only then did she draw the knife back out, the surface slick with his life blood.

Stepping back, Leni joined her family. Dr. Script collapsed to the ground, gasping and clutching at his guts, trying to force them back into his body.

"L-Leni!" He cried, as they turned to move away. "Why? I thought you loved me."

"If I loved you, that wouldn't have felt so good."

And they left, the dying man behind them weeping both blood and tears.

One last stop before they could escape. Lisa led them to Dr. Clone's office.

The door was open, and Dr. Clone sat placidly behind his desk. A gun lay on the surface, and Lisa was immediately wary, though Dr. Clone made no move to grab it.

"Come in, come in." He welcomed them into the room. "I thought you would be more comfortable with a weapon." He gestured to the gun. "Take it."

Lisa and her siblings entered cautiously. She approached the desk, but didn't take the gun.

"It might be a trap." She reasoned. She was so close to the end, she couldn't stand the thought of losing it all now.

"I promise you it's not."

Lisa and her siblings tensed, as Dr. Clone picked up the gun. Pointing it to the side, he squeezed the trigger, and a pockmark appeared on the wall. He placed the firearm back onto the mahogany surface, and gently pushed it towards her. With the shot still ringing in her ears, Lisa picked up the weapon, and pointed it at the man behind the desk. It was heavy in her hands.

"Tell me why I shouldn't shoot you." She demanded.

Dr. Clone cupped his chin in thought, before shrugging. "I'll be honest with you, I can't think of a reason. You have every right to kill me here."

Lisa was brought up short. That wasn't what she'd expected him to say. She'd expected him to point out that he was the only reason they escaped, at which point she would have shot him.

"Why'd you free us?" She asked next.

Clone brought his pointer finger and his thumb up, rubbing across his closed eyes and nose.

He chuckled. "There's something you need to understand, and you probably already do, but I'll say it anyway, just in case. I'm not a good person. I spent years playing with the lives of people like you, for the entertainment of people like me. I was paid for it, and I didn't complain. I'm not a good person. But I'm not evil either. You can only do a job like mine for so long before you're either broken by it, or you're pushed to do something. I was pushed to do something. So I freed you. Does one good deed make up for years of evil though?"

"No." Lisa answered, training the sight on the center of his forehead. She could at least give him a painless death for what he did.

"Well, at least that's answered. I have no regrets, fire away."

Blood, bone, and viscera exploded from the back of his head. His face, set in a gentle smile, met the desk, as he fell forward. Lisa stared at his body for a few seconds… She didn't hate him, she decided.

She turned back to her siblings, who wordlessly followed her, as she led them to an escape pod.

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Chapter notes:

I actually read through the first chapter Flagg's Cest Kids story for this. I'd been avoiding it until now, because it's not really my cup of tea. For this though, I made an exception.

I lied, there's no romance in this story… The closest thing to it, is probably Dr. Clone's relationship with Researcher Lurker.