Reflection 3.06

I've once heard someone say, "You don't know what you've got until it's gone." I'm fairly certain they didn't have this situation in mind when they said it, but it seemed to be apt for this situation.

Jamie wasn't anyone I recognised anymore. The little girl I had grown up with—the sister I had known since I we were both young—had become something terrible and monstrous. Though I hadn't met her in person until recently, I had always been sympathetic towards her plight for almost as long as I could remember—ever since I had figured out what she really was.

I'll admit it had taken me a bit to realise there was anything to even feel sympathy for. When we had first met each other I had felt excited at first. I had made a brand new friend, without trying, even! That in itself wasn't a huge thing—whilst I hadn't been a particularly outgoing child, neither was I without my friends from the various preschools. I had been cheerful, bubbly, and precocious—my mum had often reminded me of how I was back then, often in a wistful tone. In short I was pretty much how my other half had acted prior to this whole clusterfuck.

After my trigger event, it had been a much different world for me. My long stay in the hospital had set me back in my schooling and my friends had moved on in their lives without me. Once the nature of my powers had revealed itself, it was decided that I would not be continuing with public education. Although the existence of parahumans was not unknown, it wasn't something most families in our corner of the world had to deal with. My parents were uncertain as to the reaction our community might have if I were to reveal myself, especially since I had demonstrated very little discipline regarding my abilities. It wasn't until much later that the reason behind my lack of control had revealed itself, but by that point my life had already settled into a new routine.

Father had decided to undertake the task of home-schooling me. Even if he had dropped out from school in order to fulfill his dream of becoming a restaurant owner, the fact remained that he was a brilliant man who had once earned himself a scholarship to higher education in a foreign land. His new duties forced him to split his attention between myself and his restaurant and to share much of the responsibility with my mum, but that had actually worked out for him in the end—she proved herself to be just as shrewd and capable in managing a business as he was. In the long run, it may have actually been less stressful for him to take care of me and manage the restaurant, rather than focus wholly on the business entirely.

During this period, however, I had become more withdrawn. I no longer had any peers in my age group and my parents were still reluctant to allow me out in public whilst unsupervised. I was encouraged to associate and interact with my power in between my lessons—to find a way to control it, or at least manage it.

It hadn't taken me long at all to figure out what Jamie really was. If the odd 'dreams' I'd had in the nights after I was discharged from the hospital didn't clue me in, the fact that our memories were nearly identical up to our accident was enough to convince me. We knew the same people from our preschools, although we associated with different circles; we had the same significant events in our lives and could recall visits from notable family members. I could have dismissed the facts we knew in common as an aspect of my mind sharing my memories—the same way many of the doctors my parents had quietly taken me to had concluded—but she was also able to reveal to me details that I had never known about some of our female classmates, and I was able to do the same for her as well for the boys.

My parents had all but told me that I was to handle anything Jamie-related on my own, but I think that if they had known what I had eventually figured out, then they would not have dropped that responsibility onto my shoulders. The knowledge that my 'sister' was not simply an empowered figment of my imagination; that she no longer had a life of her own to live; that if it hadn't been for my trigger event she might have been a normal girl—it crushed me. I felt like it had been my fault for drawing her into this world, which meant it was up to me to fix it... somehow.

I didn't know the first thing about parahumans, much less how one could simply stop having their ability, so I figured my only recourse was to make Jamie's new existence as comfortable as possible. I wanted to make her life better. I devoted my existence to her wellbeing.

When she wanted to interact with the outside world again, I snuck out from home to do some exploring and experimenting. My brief forays had probably not been as secretive as I'd thought—the invitation to the secretive boarding school I would attend throughout my teenage years arrived in our mailbox shortly afterwards. Still, the end result was that we were meeting other children our age, children like us, so nobody bothered to question this new development. It wasn't long afterwards that Jamie decided she wanted us to lead an active cape life. My parents weren't thrilled with the idea—I wasn't thrilled with the idea—but I went ahead and registered as a rookie hero anyhow.

My goal was to make Jamie's life a little bit better. I wanted to make her happy here. I wanted her to be comfortable in her role as my spectre. Except, apparently she wasn't happy… and she wasn't comfortable with herself. All this time and I hadn't noticed a thing. Apparently she'd been so displeased with her situation that she didn't even recognise herself as Jamie anymore.

Jamie was gone. Only Poltergeist was left.

I had failed.

ooo

Sometime after Jamie—after Poltergeist had abandoned the two local heroes to rejoin the ongoing skirmish, I had found myself dropped back within The Darkness. My Darkness, I suppose you could say—my own personal hell. Barely twenty-four hours in this void and I was already growing to hate it. How I could have possibly thought that keeping Ja—Poltergeist, damn it—locked away here night after night was a better alternative than letting her see the reality of her existence for herself, I'll never know. Whilst a part of me wanted to do as she did and seek out any method to escape this—no matter the cost—another part of me almost saw the poetic justice Poltergeist had clearly felt in keeping me in here.

I could recognise her foreign presence intruding upon my territory. Similar to before, when she had ripped open a path for me to escape by—a path I had not managed to utilise before it had been closed off from me—her mental energies seemed seemed to overlay themselves against my own. Having had more time to be process the situation, I could definitely say I felt more aware of her influence over myself. Tendrils of thought seemed to snake their way across my mindscape, branching out again and again until a complicated lattice stretched across everything I could see.

It seemed to permeate throughout everything. There were barely any areas left that were untouched by her intrusion. I lashed out at the branches with a mental effort, much in the same way I might shoot severe disapproval down the link connecting the two of us. The branches shifted, several smaller tendrils breaking down completely as I overrode them completely. Still, it was a relatively tiny portion that had been destroyed and nearby branches were already warping themselves in response, growing new tendrils to patch over the affected area.

I exerted myself again and again, with similar results. Branches withered and grew back faster than I could destroy them. Here, in my own mindscape, I had no limits to my attacks, but it was no use if I couldn't make any headway against Poltergeist's pervasive influence. At the rate I was going, I could have been at this for eternity and still accomplished nothing.

On the bright side, if she had been telling the truth, I might only be stuck here for a little over a decade.

I could feel despair and panic encroaching upon me. Despair that I had completely dropped the ball on this situation and most likely endangered all of the people around me. Panic because I couldn't imagine what the next few years might be like as a prisoner of my own body. Everything I had done, everything I had tried to do—it had all been for naught.

Consider this, a voice seemed to echo from the depths of my mind. If you lived nearly your whole life being Jamie's thrall, how is that any different from what she is doing now?

That was a logical question, but the situation really was different. Back then I was trying to help her. I might not have done the best of jobs, but the thought had to count for something, right?

Well, at least your heart seems to be in the right place, the voice said. It's tone had shifted slightly, becoming more emotional, more mocking. Because it's a certainty that your brain was clearly taking a vacation.

I bit back the reflexive response to bite my own head off. It wouldn't do to acknowledge the voices in my head. But still, I was barely nine-years old! Preteens aren't exactly known for their long-term planning!

You're focusing too much on the decision you made when you were younger. Think about more recent events. Who or what gave you the right to unilaterally decide these things for Jamie? Once again the voice had shifted to a third tone, nothing like the first two. Was I really cracking up? This one seemed more indignant or confident—authoritative even.

Who gave me the right? My parents had told me that she was my responsi—

Your parents did not have a full grasp of the situation, the first voice interrupted me. You were the only one who had a full understanding of what was going on, yet you never sought assistance when you had discovered you were in over your head.

Okay, now this had become just plain weird. I probably was cracking up and I'd only been here for less than a day.

I had the impression of a sigh from the second voice. Think about it. You're too caught up in self-loathing and a sense of failure to think constructively. Instead, you're hiding away like some emo-kid complaining that the world is out to get them and brooding about Darkness. Although I suppose you have a point about that last part...

You seem to have conditioned yourself to put other people's opinions before your own, voice three said. So the only way for you to even consider that your ideas have merit is to trick yourself into believing that they are coming from another source.

O... kay, so now even my subconscious was ganging up on me. But this was rather ham-handed and obvious. There was no way I could fall for something so bluntly executed, I wasn't that naive. I was fully capable of making decisions for myself. If I let other people sway my judgement, that just meant I could recognise when someone else had an idea superior to my own. I wasn't that bad, was I?

Yes, you really are, all three voices said at once.

And you really are that naive. You're listening to us now, ain'tcha? voice two added.

I winced, but conceded the point.

Try to think about things in a more logical manner, the first voice said. The facts are that you have spent much time training yourself to be subservient towards Jamie's needs. That by bending to her every whim you have molded yourself into a perfect conduit for her.

Think about what she, herself, has told you, the third voice chimed in. She may have been misleading you, but she is the final authority on her own abilities. She has stated outright that living beings with simpler brains are her primary possession targets. Birds, cats, things like that.

I did recall her pointing that out. I also remembered the few times she had interacted with other people. Nightwalker and Duplex had both been rendered catatonic the first time she had engaged them. However, she had not been able to fully take control of either of them.

The only person she has been able to control is you.

What if I wasn't an end result? What if I was the outlier, that one sample that deviated from the established pattern? If Poltergeist was only able to hit me and not other people—

Then she's not as strong as she may think she is. She's let her 'success' cloud her own judgements. And you're reinforcing that impression. So if she's not controlling you because she is that strong... maybe it's just because you're an idiot.

Could it be true? Was I, on some unconscious level, so used to giving way to Poltergeist that I was allowing her to take control over me? What about the rest of her abilities?

You respected her privacy, so she was able to hide from you. You were unwilling to let her be alone, so she was able to form a strong connection with you. You had no ambitions of your own, so she was able to make decisions for you. This current situation could be an extension of that.

In other words, you were so boring she just had to step in and take over your life, because you wouldn't have done anything with it anyhow.

You've never decided anything for yourself. You've always wanted to do what you were told.

It was cold, hard logic that made me see the connections. It was the mocking words that inflamed my emotions and made me see their value. It was the authoritative conclusions that forced me to reconsider where many of my beliefs had even come from.

It seemed too easy, too simple. What if this was Poltergeist playing tricks on me again?

Called it. I knew you'd backtrack to that point. You're too much of a wuss to even believe you could think on your own. It has to be Jamie always calling the shots for you. Never you. Grow. Up.

Look around you. You can differentiate her influence from the background of your own mind. You see that it branches out. I ask you this now, Where is it branching out from?

That gave me pause. I couldn't believe I hadn't even considered that. I began tracing the energies, following one branch until it terminated into a set of smaller tendrils. Wrong direction. I traced it back the other way until it ran into another, similarly-sized branch. The two combined into a larger branch. I continued following that path and found another junction, and then another.

I traced Poltergeist's intrusion to it's source. It was another 'light', a tear in the fabric of my mindscape where she had broken in. As I approached it I could hear voices. I caught glimpses of light, of movement.

As I reach the tear my vision seems to snap back into focus. Snowflakes blur the air in all directions and I see Flurry standing there before me with a threatening posture. I hear it as she confronts me with words and by force. One of the branches sends out a pulse, it runs through various other branches and tendrils down where I had 'been' previously, then returns. I get the sudden sensation of displeasure as I fail to find what I am looking for.

I backed up slightly as another, stronger pulse burst out. This time a branch seemed to grow directly in front of me, rapidly dividing and subdividing—saturating the nearby area. I didn't want it to approach me and a brief exertion of will results in the branches completely missing the area I am occupying. They retract once more as Poltergeist's probe finishes its search and I feel another confused pulse from her as her search again fails to turn up any traces of my presence.

The pulses originated from beyond the tear—from outside my mind. There is no way for me to be certain of what lies beyond it, yet somehow I feel oddly secure in approaching it. This is not the same tear that Poltergeist had opened for me earlier. It has a different quality to it, something that almost seems like it's beyond her abilities... and mine, for that matter. I don't know if I could close this, or even open it any wider. It's just there.

I hadn't quite been paying attention to what was happening outside my body, but when Poltergeist abruptly begins her withdrawal a small part of me was not surprised. As if I had known what she was about to do before she actually did it. The tendrils merge themselves back into branches, the branches merge back into a single trunk. The whole thing begins to pull itself free from my mind, using the gap.

See your reality for yourself. Don't allow it to just pull you along without being aware of what it is. Understand it. Only then can you make an informed choice.

With a mental exertion I grab a hold of the trailing ends as it flickers through the tear, only to lose my grip as it whips to the side. Poltergeist vanishes into the ether, whilst my momentum carries me through the empty void...

To infinity... and—!

You. Be silent.

...and beyond.

...

Darkness, but it is not my own.

Darkness, but it is not hers.

If I had to explain it, I would say it melded both of ours in some unquantifiable manner. A bridge, if you will. Within this darkness was a brilliant light that did nothing to dispel the shadows around it. It was just there, without any presence. It was like the light bouncing off of a diamond or a piece of glass, but without any edge for it to reflect from. This shard was exactly in the centre of this bridge that connected us, its light shone brightly towards either end, but it didn't quite reach either of us. There was a gap between the junctions. Between this bridge and my mind. Between this bridge and her mind.

For lack of a better way to describe it, I stood at the edge of the bridge and poked my head out. At full extension I saw Darkness, but this one more familiar, even though it was still not my own. It felt familiar, but was still totally different from mine. Between there and here, an empty void. Not Darkness, but not quite light either.

It was familiar to me, I stepped into it.

The first thing I noticed was the presence of light. The sun was peeking through the clouds in a few areas and even though I had no sense of temperature in this form, I inexplicably felt warmer.

The second thing I noticed was Poltergeist beneath me. Stretched out across the bottom of a canoe. Her legs were sprawled uselessly beneath one of the benches that stretched along the sides, one arm had been thrown across her face to protect her eyes as she slept. Her wheelchair was not in evidence, apparently she had been forced to abandon it.

The third thing I notice was the sheer amount of red that surrounded us. The canoe had beached itself against the riverbank and Wu Lung and his cronies had us surrounded. They were keeping their distance—most of them sitting on the ground as if settling in to wait. Wu himself was standing over the canoe with an odd expression on his face as he stared down at the tiny slip of a girl that had given him so much trouble.

It was too late for me to avoid attention, they had apparently been here for some time and Wu's eyes snapped towards me the moment I had shifted my eyes.

"So, you're the brains of this operation?" he asked me.

I saw his group stirring in response to his sudden question, many of them retrieving weapons from the ground around them.

I held up my hands placatingly, although if I this Wu was anything like the one I had known, it probably would not help. "I don't want a fight," I said.

He snorted in response. "Bit late for that, don'tcha think?" He dropped into a crouch and placed one hand deliberately against the boat, staring at me the whole time. "Any suspicious moves and your puppet gets it. I don't know what you need in order to manifest yourself, but the other girl you took was taken back by her sister. I'm on to you now and I refuse to let the likes of you operating within my territory."

I blinked. "Wait, what?" I struggled to parse through what he was trying to imply, but then I remembered a similar misconception Karen had asked during the previous night. Had it really been that short of a time? "My puppet? The likes of me—what are you talking about?"

Wu frowned and clamped his fingers against the frame. The canoe creaked and began to shift, a loud crack sounding from the stern as the hull cracked open and water began streaming in. He flexed his hand again and the breach sealed itself. "Try again," he said heatedly.

"I'm not a bad guy!" I protested. "I'm... well I guess I might be an accessory, or maybe I count as a weapon, but I'm sort of being compelled to do this stuff. I'm..." I felt my voice faltering as my gaze fell upon Poltergeist, just barely out of reach from the water Wu had let in. "I need help," I admitted.

"Sure you do. I'm not feeling particularly generous at the moment."

"With this girl," I indicated Poltergeist with a wave of my hand. "She's like family to me. But, she's had a long string of very bad days and she's sort of lashing out. I don't mean you any harm, and I think deep down neither does she. But for all of our sakes, could you... um, restrain her?"

"Very bad days," Wu repeated blankly, an odd expression on his face. "Like today's been a good day for me, do you see me going apeshit and cracking heads open?" His hand tightened against the frame again and I heard the boat creaking.

I nervously flicked my eyes towards the stern where water was beginning to seep in once again. Reaching out slightly, I took control over the boat and floated it forward so that the breach was out of the water. I hastily dropped it again when his attention refocused on me, his eyes flashing dangerously. "Erm, maybe not heads..." I suggested weakly. "But, be reasonable... she's just a little girl..."

In retrospect, that may not have been the best thing to say or do to Wu in his current state, seeing as his pride had already been injured in our previous confrontation. Having his powers countered to a certain degree and watching his crew getting tossed around was bad enough, but to chase us down only to find that the person who had schooled him so badly was a crippled, young woman who looked to be barely out of her teens?

Fortunately cooler heads prevailed.

"Wu Lung, I wish to speak with it. Please do not damage the girl." Sunny strode past the sentry line at the edge of the clearing and made her way to the riverbank. Her eyes flicked towards the slowly sinking boat, then fixed themselves pointedly on Wu's hand.

He grimaced and exerted himself one last time, but rather than making use of his powers, he simply dragged the boat further up the bank and onto land. Poltergeist grumbled in her sleep at the jarring motion, but otherwise remained asleep.

Sunny turned back to face me. From the expression on her face, I reconsidered the thought of her mood being anything but 'cool'. She looked mildly irritated, which suggested to me that she was beyond furious. "This is a private conversation," she said flatly. "Please leave us."

"Hell no," Wu protested. "This little bitch made a move against me. Anything you have to say, I deserve to know."

I looked at Sunny with imploring eyes, hoping she could convince the villain to step away. I wasn't quite sure why Wu had been humoring her requests up until now, but I was hoping that the trend would continue for at least a little bit longer. Alas, like everything else today, things didn't quite go my way.

"Fine," Sunny capitulated abruptly, still focusing her glare towards me. "Karen's informed me about much of what you've told her. I'm asking for clarification. You are James?"

"I—er, yes?" I stumbled. I wasn't sure what threw me off more, the fact that Sunny was speaking so bluntly, or the sudden interrogation itself.

"You're Jamie's counterpart. You are her and she is you. You are both parahumans with complimentary abilities."

"Yeah... " I worried about the obvious followup to that question. I had told Karen about us being parallel universe counterparts, but I had sort of been feeling like I'd owed her something—both for the situation she'd found herself in as well as the story she had told me in return. In a way, I guess I had trusted her. Still, that didn't change the fact that having that part of our powers explained to that degree made me nervous.

Sunny's eyes flicked towards Wu Lung for a brief moment before they snapped back to me. I wasn't sure if he'd noticed the movement, but then she took a deep breath and moved to a different line of questioning. "Did you hurt Karen?"

I lowered my head. "I don't remember it, but yeah... I'm pretty sure I did."

Her eyes hardened fractionally. "Did you intend to bring her harm?"

"No!" I shouted. "I liked her, she was friendly... if a bit too curious for her own good. But I really thought she would be good for Jamie. I didn't think... " I looked away. "I didn't even know that... Poltergeist... was that close to cracking." I lifted my head again to meet her eyes. "It was my fault. I don't know what you can do to me, but whatever you decide, it should be to me. Poltergeist—Jamie—she's not well... I want you to help her."

"Help her," Sunny echoed. "The way I was trying to help her before this all started?"

"Well... " I looked away guiltily. "At least now you know what you're up against."

There was an awkward silence for several moments. Sunny stared at me; I stared down at Poltergeist; Wu's eyes glanced back and forth between all three of us, but he kept silent.

"Poltergeist," Sunny mused, leaning back slightly. "Would that not that fit you better? You are, after all, the ghost that seems to be able to make objects mysteriously fly."

I shrugged. "She chose the name."

"I see." Sunny half-turned to face Wu Lung directly. "Have your people take her somewhere safe. If they can keep her safely contained without harming her, I would appreciate it."

"You've been saying that a lot lately," Wu grumbled, although he lifted one arm to give a brief hand signal and several members of his gang broke ranks to march towards us. "I'm still waiting to see what your appreciation looks like, because right now I'm not feeling it."

"Help me resolve this peacefully and you may yet find out."

"I'm going... I'm going... Geez, what was I thinking? Stupid, pushy witch."

"What did you say?"

"...Stupid, pushy witch?"

"Ah. That's what I thought. It never hurts to be certain." Sunny turned back towards me and I involuntarily floated a few paces back. Her expression hadn't shifted in the slightest, yet I had the impression that being reminded of my presence did not exactly fill her with joy. The two of us stared at each other as Wu and his minions carefully retrieved Poltergeist's sleeping body and marched her off to where they had their vehicles parked. Part of me wanted to stop them, yet another part figured this would be the best thing I could possibly do for her.

Logically, I knew that Poltergeist needed to be kept somewhere where she could do no more harm to anyone. Emotionally, I felt like I should have been finding some way to help her, or at least mitigate my failure to do so.

I didn't even realise my gaze had shifted away from our little face-off until Sunny cleared her throat expectantly. When I turned back to face her she was frowning, although much of the malice had disappeared from her expression.

"I hope you'll forgive me if I say you are a stupidly honest person," she said.

"Er, thanks?"

"You clearly mean well, but your decision-making process is not exactly the best there is," she clarified.

"Yes, thank you for pointing that out," I grumbled. "You can join the little voices in my head."

"You helped my sister," Sunny said. "You have my sincere gratitude for that. Karen speaks very well of you." Her face twisted as if she'd just bitten into something sour. "On the other hand, she still speaks well of Jamie, so I find myself beginning to question her judgement."

She tilted her head to look at me. "I understand you have coexisted peacefully with Jamie—with this... Poltergeist—for some time. You know her best. What would you have us do with her?"

Help her, was the absolute first thing that came to mind first, quickly followed by, Lock her up. The problem was I didn't know how to help her, nor did I think locking her away from everything she'd known would do anything in the long run. Almost as I felt myself giving up again, I heard a tiny voice in the back of my head. Why not just have both?

I blinked, turning the thought over in my head as I considered the merits of the suggestion—the idea? Did this even count as something I had come up with? I shook my head, definitely not the time to worry about that.

"I think... " I began cautiously, "I might know what we could do..."

I told Sunny my suggestion. She didn't seem surprised, but then again it was a rather obvious course of action in hindsight. It was just a completely different direction from what I had been thinking before, something I never would have considered otherwise.

...

Once the arrangements had been made, I bid Sunny farewell and sought out Poltergeist via our link. Instead of following it to her body, I simply detached myself from the spectral avatar and returned to the void between our bodies. Back to the bridge spanning our worlds.

I was more attuned with Poltergeist's mental signature now, so I could easily see that she was still present in my world. She wasn't currently inhabiting my body, her presence was some distance away. I still couldn't tell what she was up to, but knowing that my body was cleared of her presence was good enough for me.

Her mental block keeping me from waking up on my own was still there, but being able to see it with more clarity gave me a bit more leeway in dealing with it. After a few minutes of simply picking at it, the energy simply unraveled itself and vanished into the ether.

I blinked open my eyes to find myself flat on my back. My jumpsuit was slightly damp against my arm and leg cuffs, as well as a large wet splotch against my chest. As I rose into a sitting position, I noticed the still form of Flurry lying on the ground barely a metre away from me. I quickly rolled to my feet, reaching out with my hands to check her pulse.

I had barely brought my fingers into contact with the hood covering her face when a forceful blow knocked me away from her. I batted at the snow pressing against my side as she staggered to her feet, the eyeholes of her mask narrowing as she regarded me.

"Looking Glass?" she wheezed, pressing a hand against her own chest tenderly.

"Um, hi?" I gave her an abbreviated wave and tried to give her a relieved smile. It was slightly unsteady from a lack of confidence, not helped as she raised her arm towards me and formations of snow began collecting in front of her.

"What beverage did your mother serve to me when I visited your establishment this morning?"

"Um, green tea?" I answered. "Although if that was supposed to be a security question of sorts, you should know that she always serves green tea, so that probably wasn't a very good one..."

Despite my very reasonable objections, Flurry lowered her hand and dismissed her attack. "It will still work. You are far too honest for your own good," she stated. "J seems to have taken great delight in attempting misdirection."

I didn't bother correcting her use of Poltergeist's former code name. I still wasn't quite sure what had happened between the two of them, but I could make an educated guess. I glanced around the open field. "Where is she now?"

"I do not know," Flurry replied. "I should probably reestablish contact with Ajax if he is still active." She turned towards the buildings in the far-off distance, watching it closely for several moments. "From the lack of activity coming from the homestead, it is possible that their situation may have been resolved.

"Oh, it's resolved." A male voice, young, called out from the settlement's direction. The tall grass parted and a teenaged boy stepped into view. And another one. And another. Their leader grinned and posted his hands on his hips. "A few minutes of panic and they had an entire army bearing down on them. I'm not sure they were equipped to deal with that."

And another... and another... and another...

"Duplex," Flurry identified the newcomer.

Duplex held up a finger as if in correction. "Half-right," he said. "Duplex is taking a bit of a break at the moment. He's fine, though. It wouldn't do to harm him, not when he's powering this many of his clones."

And another... all in all there were several dozen Duplex clones, spreading out to surround us on all sides. That in itself was unnerving, because during my first encounter I had never seen them do any sort of task without a single-minded focus. Each of these clones seemed aware in a manner they never had been before. Rather than the blank look they had sported previously, they now all wore the same maddening grin on their faces. A grin that was startlingly familiar... I choked back a surprised outcry.

Flurry had reached the same conclusion I had, dropping into a half-crouch and summoning more snow around her. "Poltergeist?"

"Full marks!" he—or she—crowed. "To be honest I was hoping I could have you, Flurry. But somehow I just wasn't able to get the hooks in deep enough. Duplex is like Nightwalker, he seems to be adapting to me somehow—we'll need to experiment with that later when we have the chance, James."

"But the clones!" she hammered a fist against her chest. "They're something else. Durable, yet flimsy. Hordes of them, but they're all simply copies of a single one. Capable of independent actions..."

From all around us, each clone opened it's mouth in a haunting chorus. "... and they're all really, really simple-minded."

ooo

(a/n)—apologies for the late updates. classes have started and not only am i attending a new school in a different city, but i commute there. and it is faaaar. most days in the week i have simply been finishing whatever homework i have left and crashing into bed. i was able to sneak in a few paragraphs here and there in between classes, but it's still far less time than i'm used to having.

some of the writing may have suffered because of this. i'm sort of scared the scenes seem to be jumping around without the meanings fully getting across. lot's of BLAMs or something. but yknow what, i'm too tired and i want to actually enjoy my weekend. sorta. so here's what you get!

enjoy!

...or else?