Chapter 69: Cloned
"Not another one," I groaned as I stepped out of the general store. I was clutching a newspaper that I'd bought, and, yet another murder had happened. This time, as well as the victim being ripped apart, the body had been dumped into the white knight castle moat. It was truly terrible.
I really hoped this murderer would be caught soon. It was getting ridiculous- six people were dead now because of him/her. Who would want to perform such horrible crimes against nature? It was disgusting.
King David was standing on a temporary platform, placed in the middle of Falador square. He was wearing a bottle-blue suit, and he looked grave. Several bodyguards stood around the platform. The atmosphere in the crowd gathered in front wasn't excited- it was tense. Sir Amik Varze stood behind him. I'd gone into the shop to get a newspaper while the crowd was gathering.
"Citizens of Falador," he announced. "I have been called down from business in Ardougne to discuss a very urgent matter with you."
"There have been murders recently. These murders have been terrible- bodies ripped apart and drained of blood. These murders need to stop."
"Not only have there been murders, but more disturbing events have been happening. Recently, a crazed giant mole completely destroyed the Falador Gardens. Gone, just like that. Such a beautiful place was completely destroyed by rage."
"Now, terrible things have been happening for a while, but this is hitting the limit. Lives are being lost because of one monster of a human being."
"A professional investigation is being held about the murderers. We urge you, if you know anything, to tell us. Thanks for listening. By the way, wanted posters for a particular Gypsy Aris have been placed everywhere. If you know anything about her whereabouts, we'd appreciate information."
We were all ushered out of the square by several bodyguards. I walked back to Capablanca's house, passing the pit which used to be the gardens.
I walked into Capablanca's house, and into the living room, where everyone was sitting, except for Aaron.
"Where is Aaron?" I asked, knowing that all I would get back would be a shrug. I was right. I swore loudly. "Where the hell is he? He's been disappearing a lot recently. I hope he's OK."
I decided to go for a chat with Jamie. I hadn't talked to him in a while, because I'd been so busy with helping with the attempt to try and repair the area of destruction around the Falador gardens. The gardens themselves were way beyond repair- how could you fix a pit in the floor? Osrie1, Mark and Amy11 decided to come with me. We left the house, and walked back down the street.
The streets were almost deserted. People were afraid of leaving the safety of their houses since the murders. The air was chilly, and there was a sinister aura floating around. The wind seemed to fill the surrounding space. I gulped, and continued.
As we walked into town square, I was shocked to see two dark figures in black robes standing by the statue. They ignored us, and I eavesdropped in their conversation.
"The next time I see good old Dave, I'm going to give him a pat on the back," one said to the other. "Thanks to him and his speech on the murderer, nobody is around. It's amazing how gullible crowds are. Now we have peace to wait for our subject to come (because he always does, he seems to be a danger magnet), and then we can start the experiment. If he doesn't show up, we'll go looking for him." One of them looked up, and saw us. He chuckled. "Look, James, at who has come to join us."
I was shocked to see James pull down his hood, revealing his bushy black hair, gorilla-thumb moustache, and his sly grin.
"Well, speak of the devil," James chuckled. "Hello, Mainiac97. I've been waiting for you. We haven't met for a while, haven't we? I would like to test a theory on you."
"You see, Mainiac97, I have not been sitting on a rock doing nothing all winter. Master Samuel is a very busy man, and I, being his left-hand assistant, am given jobs to do on a daily rate that my master cannot do himself. But, there are the times where I have nothing to do. So, I use that time wisely, working on a theory that I and my friend have been developing."
"Who is your friend?" I asked suspiciously. He pointed to the cloaked man that was standing next to him. "Who are you?" I asked him. He chuckled.
"Young one," he replied. "You may remember me from the Stronghold of Security." I remembered him as the mysterious cloaked man that kept popping up in my dreams. "I am another assistant of Master Samuel. My name will remain a mystery to you. For now, you can call me the mysterious cloaked man- wait, no. Maybe that's a bit of a mouthful. Call me MCM." I raised an eyebrow. MCM was a strange pseudonym.
James interrupted my thoughts. "Anyway, I was talking about my theory," he reminded me. "My theory is, simply, it is impossible to defeat yourself. Physically, that is. It may sound odd, but my theory is, if you were faced with someone that was exactly like you- someone who WAS you- in every aspect, you couldn't defeat that person. That person would think like you, fight like you, strategise like you, because that person would BE you. It's a simple, yet ever so complex theory, and I'm amazed that my brain is random enough to even consider it."
"I developed on this theory, and with the help of MCM, I decided to create a copy of someone. Another word you could use is clone. After discussion, we decided to use you as our test subject. A special potion is needed to do this. It is something which recreates you exactly. It's a fairly complex potion, but not as complex as the potion Master Samuel is brewing. A potion which requires an ingredient such as essence of Delrith is probably the hardest potion to brew in the whole of RuneScape- but the result will be worth the work."
"Some ingredients for our cloning potion were fairly easy to get, but others weren't so easy. I needed a drop of cloning mix to recreate myself, and there are only a few bottles in the world. Isn't it a miracle that I find a bottle in the Lumbridge general store, of all places? Mind you, it wasn't cheap. It would have cost me over 30 million coins if I were to buy it the normal way. But, thanks to my amazing thievery skills, I had it for absolutely nothing!" I thought I'd seen the bottle somewhere before. Wasn't it the expensive bottle of swirly black stuff that I'd seen, gathering dust on a shelf? It sounded like it.
"So I've worked on the potion in my spare time, and it is done at last. I just need one more ingredient- a piece of you. A hair would suffice." He finished his explanation- more like his brag- with a flourish. During this speech, I hadn't noticed that the MCM was sneaking behind me. He grabbed my arms violently. I struggled, and failed miserably. He sniggered.
"You'll have to do better then that, noob," he sneered. That obnoxious tone of voice sounded ever so familiar to me….where had I heard it before?
James walked forward, and yanked some of my hairs out. I yelped in pain. James took a vial full of swirling, disgusting green liquid out of his pocket, and dropped the hairs in. The potion turned a scarlet shade of red, and bubbled aggressively. It exploded, and filled the area with filthy black smoke.
I coughed, and my vision was obscured by the smoke. When it cleared, the vial was nowhere in sight. Instead, someone stood there. I gasped- this person looked exactly like me. "Meet the new Mainiac97," James announced.
My clone looked exactly like me. It was like staring into a mirror. I could sense that he was thinking exactly the same thing. The only difference was that the smile seemed slightly different (more sinister- of course, his master WAS James), and that he had a dark version of Silverlight, instead of the normal one. He even had the same clothes, the same weapons, the same everything!
"Hello," the other Mainiac97 announced. "I'm Mainiac97."
"No," I protested. "I'm Mainiac97. I'm the original!"
"No! I am!" he shouted back.
"No! I am!" I replied angrily.
"I am!"
"I am!"
"I am!"
"I am!"
"Prove it to me!" the other Mainiac97 spat. "I'll prove to you that I'm stronger then you! Then you'll believe that I'm the real Mainiac97!"
"OK then!" I spat back. The MCM let go of me, and I ran forward to attack this imposter. James chuckled silently.
I tried to hit my clone in the ribs with my sword, but he had the same idea, and blocked me. I tried smashing my Barbarian hammer into his skull, but he cried to knee me in the crotch. I dodged, and tried to knock his head off with the hammer. He did the same thing, and we collided. I swung around with Silverlight, but he dodged.
"This is going nowhere," I groaned. We continued fighting in a similar fashion for another ten minutes.
I was gasping for air by the end of it. I knew what James was trying to do- he was practicing his theory. Once we were both too exhausted to fight any more, he'd kill me very easily. That way, he could get revenge, prove a theory, and cause misery all in one package. It was genius, even though I didn't like admitting it.
I tried to think of loopholes in his theory. Obviously, I physically couldn't defeat my clone twin, since we looked alike, and thought alike. But…..other people or things could defeat him. Very easily, since they thought/moved differently. That settled it. I couldn't try and attack him physically. I needed to use a different approach by getting some help. The other Mainiac97 was thinking the same way, searching for tactics to use. I looked up, and behind the other Mainiac97 the famous Falador statue stood, tall and high. Could I use that somehow?
As a last resort, I threw my Barbarian hammer at the other Mainiac97. He ducked, and it flew right over his head. It hit the Saradomin statue's head, and the head cracked, and fell off its body. It landed on the other Mainiac97. He was knocked out in an instant. I went up to him, and stamped on his neck until I heard the crack.
"Sorry, but there's room for only one Mainiac97 in this world," I told the dead body at my feet. James looked furious, since I'd just poked a massive gaping hole in his logic. His theory was that you couldn't defeat yourself. My theory is you could defeat yourself, but only by accident. So, that way, you weren't really defeating yourself. I made that rock fall by accident, and my clone couldn't know when to dodge, because I never intended to make that statue head fall on him.
"Darn it," James muttered as he was wrestled to the ground by Mark. "This has been a disaster. I'm going. Remember, I'll get my revenge." At that, he disappeared in a puff of smoke. The MCM sighed.
"I can take the four of you on," he said. "But I won't bother tackling you noobs. Goodbye." In another puff of smoke, he was gone too.
We continued across the bridge leading to the white knight castle as if nothing had happened. I was very shocked at the events of today. I hoped that the murderer would be caught soon, and I hoped that James wouldn't have any more spare time to practice another theory where I was the test subject.
I also wondered who the MCM (mysterious cloaked man) really was. Hidden underneath that cloak, where nobody could see his face. That was another mystery out of a million I needed to solve in this world.
I finally hoped that Aaron was OK, wherever he was, whatever he was doing. There was never a very peaceful moment in my life. One day, possibly, that could change. I just needed to wait.
I hope you enjoyed that chapter. Maybe it seemed a bit odd- a theory about defeating yourself?- but I wanted to bring back James and evil-Mainiac97 in one wya or another. So, who do you think the MCM really is?
I have a little poll here. In chapter 72, Mainiac is going to meet an old enemy with improvements and have an epic fight with that enemy. who should the enemy be?
A) The Demon Clan
or....
B) The Noob exterminators
Leave your answer in a review!
next time: Happy Easter everyone!
Until next time, toodles!