The Fifth Holiday special: Clone alone, Cat and Mouse.
Rocket ran.
Both Rocket's ran, the second one leaping off the windowsill, stolen carbine slung across back, and scuttling four-legged towards Quill-Groot, and tried to apply first aid. Figures. Thought Rocket-Prime. Intruder-Rocket will be programed to think of him as his Groot, unless he escaped before they could program that bit, in which case he'll see the clones as a threat to him…
"Oh fuck." Said, Rocket-Prime, as the realisation hit him.
What exactly would I do if a stranger that looked like me broke into my home, killed Gamora, Drax and Quill, and maimed Groot?
Oh shit!
Rocket-Prime ran faster. He didn't have a shoulder strap for his improvised bow, so he had to stay on two legs, the slower option for him. He was also very aware that he did his best thinking when he was angry. Anger clouded most minds, it focused his, drove off distraction and pain and doubt. He was at his smartest and most creative when he was enraged, a cold, hard fury.
So the other me is faster, smarter, and better armed than me, and knows everything I know, give or take. It'll also know the layout of the building, and where It would put traps if it were me, which it is.
Oh shit…. What frickin advantages do I have? We'll, I'm a little drunk, Tired from all the trap building, and all out of ideas… and I don't really want to kill another me, a sentiment I doubt it will firckin' share.
It's probably insane, if it just got my memories, but given I ain't exactly the image of mental health myself, not sure If I can fight crazy with crazy…
I'm Frickin' screwed! My festive goose is cooked!
Rocket-prime skidded round a corner, avoiding a patch of dry lubricant spayed onto the floor directly in front of an open basement hatch. Behind him, he could hear the clicking of claws on concrete. Intruder-Rocket was gaining on him. Rocket-prime ducked left, thought a small hole in the wall into a store-room, sliding on his back, and kicked out a large wedge. Without it, the only thing stopping a heavy stack of engine parts from falling was a thin rod, attached to a tripwire that ran along the edge of the hole he's just ducked through. If anyone followed, they'd get crushed under the mass and-
The air-vent in the wall above him kicked open, silhouetting a dark shape. The flicked up the crossbow and fired on instinct and instantly regretted it when he nailed the falling kitchen mop, centre mass. He yelled, and scooted away on all fours, dumping the useless bow. There was a click of paws behind him, the furred figure rolling off the impact, and then it was after him, so close he could feel its breath on his feet as it practically nipped at his ankles, the ugly brute. He could smell it, close enough to his own scent to be all the more annoying, but a heavier odour somehow, oilier fur, slightly more rank breath. It had been drinking, more than he had. Not surprising, if it just got all my memories in one go…Fuck, I'd find an alley somewhere and drink until I forgot why I was drinking! And it seemed to be spurning the gun, reaching for him with teeth and grasping claws, trying to take him alive. That seemed like a really bad sign in his estimation: he couldn't imagine it had any good or kindly goals for doing so. It's not like it's going to hug me, stroke my ears and tell me it's all going to all right. He thought, blithely. And it's eyes… fuck it's eyes. Not crazy, so much as haunted. They scared him.
Rocket-Prime ducked and jinked trying to lose him. They ran up the Christmas tree, a spare limb donated by Groot, and down again, sending it and presents flying. They then ran up the cardboard fire-place Quill had mounted over the heating vent. Rocket-prime felt his right rear paw slip on a candle, and Intruder-Rocket tackled him from behind. They both fell, rolling of the mantle, but Rocket-Prime got his claws into a stocking, arresting his fall and swinging off it, his other-self clinging to his footpaws. They both got catapulted back into the stash of presents with a crunching of breakables. Intruder-Rocket was up first, yelling that he just wanted to talk, but also swinging a stocking like a bludgeon, getting Rocket-prime in the face with a crack as the jar of hair-gel someone ha inexplicably got Drax smashed off his face. Two can pay at that game… thought Rocket-prime, grabbing the Stocking with his own name on it.
"Eat coal, clone face!" he yelled, swinging hard and battering his mirror with unprocessed hydrocarbons, the fruit of a year's busily naughty-list-ing. The other Rocket went down, slipping, only for a moment, and he was up and running.
My room. I can hold out there, if I get there first. They'll be real weapons there. Bad ones. He thought. He thinks he's me, but he's not. That's my one advantage over him…
The other him had clearly had the same idea, and the fight became a desperate race to the the room, biting and snapping at each other every inch, covered in coal dust, Groot-leaves and tinsel.
"Oh fuck, why do I have the worst Christmases! I bet Quill doesn't have to put up with shit like this!"
*Cut to Quill, screaming and being held hostage by a giant She-hulk on the top of a sky-scraper, as Gamora an Drax fly round on jet-packs, shooting at her*
Rocket-Prime kicked Intruder-Rocket hard in the face with both feet, and then ducked into the room, leaving the door ajar.
There, and there… he thought, eyes darting. He ran up the walls and then down again, in an inverted "U" shape, while the other Rocket burst through the door and paused, standing upright in the centre of the room, looking around, confused.
Rocket threw the gas canister at its head form above, and then ran own the wall, and ducked into a small cage he kept for transporting bounties, locking himself in and taking the keys with him.
Intruder-Rocket ducked the gas bottle, and it narrowly missed his head, smashing open on the floor with a hiss, and blasting them both with the gas, flattening fur and making them both wince as it covered them, down to the roots of their fur, contacting the skin.
Intruder-Rocket's eyes went wide, and gasped as he recognised the smell. He, to Rocket Primes surprise, grabbed the door and slammed it shut, before activating the special extractor fan, the one that vented into space.
"Tabun?" he yelled. "Tabun nerve-gas? Are you frickin' insane!?"
Rocket-prime shrugged. "It was that or VX, or Chlorine tetrafluorate. In the time it would take you to close the door, enough VX would leak out to kill civilians, it's that lethal, and tetrafluorate would melt both of us, and the room, and half the frickin' block."
Intruder –Rocket ran across the room, and grabbed atropine form the med-kit. Smart: Tabun killed by blocking the enzyme acetylcholinesterase, which told your nerves when to stop sending signals. You'd spasm, lose control of muscles, including the ones that controlled breathing, and cough yourself to death. Atropine, basically deadly nightshade, killed by stopping enzymes from sending nerve signals at all and suffocated you quietly. So the two cancelled out.
To Rocket-primes surprise, it ran to him with the syringe, and tried to force it though the wire mesh of the cage. It wouldn't fit.
"Take it, take it you frickin' dolt! Who are you, who the fuck are you?"
Rocket-prime backed away, flattening out to get further away from him.
"Wait, what? Don't you want to kill me?" he asked.
"Kill you? I've never met a me before I… look who made you, was it KLS? What make an model are you? What's fucking wrong with your legs?"
"I…." Rocket-Prime froze "I…" he made his decision.
He put his paws on the mesh "No, you take it, you idiot! I have the chemical warfare mod, a bionic. You don't, you just think you do! I'm immune. You're not, idiot!" yelled Rocket-Prime
"I'm not immune?! You're not immune, idiot. Take the syringe! Who are you? You think you're me right? So that means memory graft? Those never take properly. What's the first thing you remember?" yelled Intruder Rocket.
"Look, I know I'm the real Rocket because I know dammit!" yelled Rocket-Prime, banging his fists on the mesh." So take the damn syringe you idiot!" he yelled, putting a shaking paw on the mesh "Otherwise-"
Wait, hold on one moment?
He looked down. He paw was shaking. His paw was shaking. But he's couldn't: His bionics…
Oh no…
He looked up.
The other Rocket was picking the lock. "Hey, keep calm buddy. Just, just talk, okay? What's your first memory? Let me guess, waking up drunk in an alleyway somewhere? Classic memory graft, you know there are gaps in your memory, so you freak out. If you've got a personality like me, that means hitting the bottle. You do that before our memories start to form, you're gonna wake up someplace weird, only partly knowing why."
"I… I went drinking for Christmas with Quill. I woke up in an alley because that's where Quill left me. He'd been there last night, I could smell it-"
"Or you sought out a familiar scent while you were still uploading memories. I went drinking with Quill last night, and he left the bar before me, the lightweight. Why were you there, what mission were you on?" asked Intruder Rocket.
"I.. I don't remember, the Drink-" he said, and then coughed. Oh gods, why was his chest feeling so tight? He slumped forwards, his legs shaking.
"If you're drunk enough to block transfer of short term data, you're too drunk to build traps, idiot! Booze isn't why you have gaps in your memory, You-" Intruder-Rockets lock-pick broke, and he swore. "Give me the key! Give me the damn key!"
"You.. you're the fake. You ran to the wounded Quill clone, because you thought he was your Groot…."
"I ran to him because I came home from the pub after a two day binge and saw my friend with his eye hanging out. Give me the key!"
Groaning, bent double fighting for breath, Rocket passed him the key, sliding it thought the mesh. A second later he felt the steel kiss of the auto-injector, but they both knew it was too late.
I… I have enough of his memories to know that. Rocket-prime realised. He felt arms, weirdly familiar arms, pick him up and cradle him, carrying him out of the room. But not to know who I was. What a jip!
"Oh man, I thought I was the real one." He muttered, coughing.
"Yeah well, that's the idea, ain't it?" said Rocket, hauling him up in a rough hug. "Come on! Let's get you to a medic, or a lab or, shit, we can try something, anything!"
Rocket Prime, the clone, coughed, and shook his head. He could barely talk now.
"I… I thought I was the real one…. I really did…I… I…" he coughed. "I'm scared."
Rocket, the real Rocket, stumbled under his weight, and fell, cashing own at the base of the Christmas tree. Clone Rocket could see the lights, just the lights. "Hey," he heard. "Hey!" the Clone Rocket could just hear him say, as he pulled him close, and stroked his ears and said. "Hey, it's okay pal, you're… you're going to be all right... going to be all right…"
Awesome Xmas playlist: Joni Mitchell River.
"You're going to be all right…"
Fleek cussed and cursed as he ran his eyes under the faucet in the tiny triangle of kitchen appliances in the corner of the warehouse, crying. Their Little-helper turrets were watching him, and there were no-go areas marked on the floor between him and every exit. He was trapped. Trapped in a booby-trapped warehouse with not one, but two tiny feral monsters .
Crink. The glanced over. The fridge door next to him had opened. The cupboard next to it too. A moment later, they closed. Rocket was there, wiskey bottle in hand, chilled shot glass over the top of it.
Gun in the other paw. Not quite pointing at him.
Rocket didn't even look at him, as he climbed up onto a barstool, dumped the gun on the counter, pointing at Fleek, and poured a shot, opened it, and pored again. Fleek stared, horrified. The Racoon was crying, and some vapour or smoke seemed to be rising from his fur, like he'd been soaked in hot water on a cold day.
"Not going to ask which one I am?" asked Rocket, after three or four drinks. One finger tapping again and again on the butt of his gun.
Fleek paused, frightened, and then shook his head. Water dripping.
"No. We never did get the clone of you right. The first one wasn't even bipedal, or sapient was just.. just a thing. It ran screaming. Got hit by a groundcar."
"Security feature." Said Rocket, knocking back a shot. "KLS didn't want their expensive toys self-replicating, and didn't want people buying two and rubbing them together until they have an army. There's nothing in my DNA that makes me me, that's all surgical. If any of us could ever breed, the offspring wouldn't be intelligent. So what did you do? To make that one?"
"Oh, got the golem forge to print something roughly your shape, Couldn't even get its legs right, It just looked… wrong. Built it then dropped a cloned Quill-brain into it and loaded your memories."
"Huh. How'd you plan to deal with organ rejection?" asked Rocket, staring into his drink.
"Didn't: it just needed to get in here and get the data. It only had a lifespan of a few days. Why… why did that one go insane? Why'd it go feral?"
"It didn't."
"It killed the other clones. It was mad."
"It wasn't. It was perfectly sane. You just gave it a cheap memory graft. Data degradation was a bitch, I'd guess? When that happens, you don't get complex people. You get flattened, one dimensional versions. You got me, striped own, pared back to the bare bones. Me, reduced to my most basic components. "
He knocked back the drink, and looked into the glass.
"Childhood, get born in a lab, kill everyone and escape. Juvenile stage, flee, hide, commit crime, drink the shame away. Adult stage, find the Guardians, join with them, protect them. No matter what, no matter how self-destructive." He said, topping up his glass.
"He knew. On some buried, subconscious level, he knew. There were a thousand weapons in my room, he picked the one weapon that would kill an imposter, but not me. So long as those Clones lived, they were a threat to the Guardians, him included. I checked the security logs: he asked Little Helper to destroy imposters earlier, and it told him it couldn't be ordered to suicide him, although I don't know if he understood that's what it was saying. He… he was a version of me without the benefit of the rest of the team. Without the support of friends. And I don't know if you've guessed, I have some self-destructive tendencies."
Rocket finished his drink, and then looked over, eyes hooded.
"He deserved better, friend."
Fleek open and close his mouth, dry with fear.
"I… I didn't kill him. Whatever happened to him that's on him. This, this was meant to be just a simple robbery job. No one was supposed to get hurt. And no one did, we didn't kill anyone! I've never killed anyone! That was the clone." He noticed Rocket's stare. "That was the clone!"
"That was the clone." Agreed Rocket, fingering his gun. "Just the clone. Just the disposable, low life-span clone. How many did you build?"
"Errr…"
"How many did you build!"
"Eleven! Oh Gods, we built eleven before we got it right and they all died! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!"
Rocket glared, claw tap-tapping on the gun. "You're sorry. Well don't apologise to me. Apologise to the other guy."
Fleek winced, eyes closed, hands shaking, expecting that bullet.
Rocket snorted, and went back to his booze. "Get out."
Fleek open one eye. "I'm sorry?" he asked.
"Yes, you said that. Get out. Go. Run. I'll turn of the security. Go. Make it better, somehow, if you can." Said Rocket. "Get out of my sight. Leave the Groot-Quill clone, I'll see it gets a good home. Go, now, or I'll kill you."
"You… you're not going to kill me anyway?" said Fleek, rubbing at his chest. It felt a little tight.
Rocket shrugged. "You haven't done anything to me." said Rocket honestly. "I've no reason to kill you." He said, patting Fleek on the shoulder as he got up to leave, even cupping his cheek briefly, like a mobster in an old film, his fur smoking. "It's Christmas. I forgive you." he said, turning back to his booze as Fleek fled. He poured, he drunk he poured again.
"Can't speak for the other guy, though." He said, fur smoking, and remembering how, like other nerve agents, Tabun was absorbed through the skin.
His communicator bleeped.
"Quill…. yeah… yeah, you left me in the pub. Yeah, I just got back. Yeah, I'll clean up." he said, looking around at the carnage. "No, don't worry that I'll be lonely. I had a good heart to heart with myself, it's okay…
"Yeah. Merry Christmas to you too, Quill."
Quill and Rocket stared, horrified as Drax, Groot and Gamora put away the sock puppets. It was their Christmas party, and they'd just told a horrifying story about clone murder.
"That's the most depressing Christmas story I've ever heard! Why would toy tell that!" yelled Quill.
Rocket agreed. "That's some black-mirror level shit! Why would you make up a depressing story about clone murder at Christmas!"
"It's a parable." said Gamora leaning in. "A morality tale." She said, leaning close.
"About what?" asked Quill, leaning in, hugging Rocket, afraid.
Gamora ginned, and they yelled "About why you boys should clean out the sink and stop being gross, because you're leaving potentially clone-able DNA all over the place! Stop being slobs. Be nice to your family," she said, winking at camera. "it's Christmas after all!"
