The shadows of cloning ((Story))

Alarm sirens rang through the hallways as a platoon of Crey Security and scientists took up position in a lab, some standing, some kneeling, all with their weapons fixed on a door in front of them. In the middle of the lab two Crey Power suits flanked a Paragon Protector, who stood proud, confident, and waiting. The door in front of them started to form Ice on its surface, and the temperature started to drop. Suddenly shouts could be heard from on the other side of the door, complaining about how someone was taking too long. Suddenly the door shuddered, as if hit by something very heavy and strong. It shuddered a second time, and a third time the door shuddered and buckled, opening into the hallway. There, where the door was, a large robot about ten feet tall stood, cyan in color with a large red jewel on its chest, red glowing eyes, and large gears on its shoulders, with its fist still outstretched from where it had punched the door in. The Paragon Protector waved its hand as an attack gesture, and one of the Crey Power Tanks yelled, “All units, open fire on the Zio Technautica!!”

Fire from machine guns rang out, the Power Tanks shot bolts of powerful, explosive energy, and the Paragon Protector shot spines from out of its body, and hurled some at the massive robot. Bullets and energy alike slammed into the robot's chest, with little effect. Suddenly another hero in Blue Tights wearing a brown overcoat ran out from behind the robot. With him wind and ice filled the corridor, causing soldiers to start freezing, the power tanks started to slip on ice forming on the floor, and the Paragon Protector took to the air. Walking into the icy chaos he had caused, the mutant formed a sword of pure ice and took a swing at one of the Power tanks. The tank shuddered under the swings of ice, its wearer freezing and unable to focus, and finally the suit's power supply froze over, cutting off and leaving a person trapped in a frozen shell of metal.

Suddenly a massive bolt of energy burst out from behind the Zio Technautica and slammed into the second Power Tank, causing it to stagger under the impact, and a robotic girl with long pink hair flew into the room with a fiery sword, and slashed into the Power Tank's power supply, disabling it and causing the suit to de-power and fall to the floor. The robotic girl then opened her hand and let the flaming blade dissipate, and looked around her as guards started to panic and run for it. Only the Paragon Protector held its ground, charging straight at the Zio Technautica.

The soldiers running away suddenly stopped. The shadows in the corners of the room seem to gather together, and from the gathering shadows a person sporting pointed ears and wearing a long leather overcoat and enough leather to cause immediate rage from any bovine sprung forth, a long broadsword in his hand. Some of the soldiers tried opening fire, the bullets were stopped by the very shadows around him, and a few he even somehow parried with his sword. He set about knocking the lot of them out, only causing moderate slashes here and there and knocking the rest of them with the flat of his sword.

The Zio Technautica looked at the Paragon Protector heading straight at it, and strode foreward to meet it head on. The Protector slashed and clawed at the Zio, to which the Zio pulled one of its fists back, the gear on its shoulder clicking back loudly, then released and spun foreward massively fast, sending the Zio's fist shooting foreward at a massive speed, knocking the Protector straight up into the ceiling. The protector floated slowly down, and the Zio started unleashing punch after punch, the gears on its shoulders spinning fast and starting to crackle with electricity. Finally with one final punch the Paragon Protector fell to the ground limp.

The four heroes walked into the middle of the room, when suddenly the one in black who had appeared from shadows broke out, “Geez, Frost Flow, think you can make the room any colder?”
The hero in blue smirked and replied, “Feels fine to me, Teranar. Maybe you need to slaughter more cows for warmth if you're going to hang around me.”
Suddenly a loud, metallic voice came from the Zio Technautica. “Let's argue later. That was the easy part. If the information we're getting is as sensitive as Terry's contact said, we can expect Arachnos to send Crey some backup any moment. It will take me a few moments to hack into the computers, so you'll need to cover me. It won't be easy to fight plugged into a computer. Terry can plug me up, Frost, Valciana, cover us and make sure that we don't have company.”

The robotic girl nodded and floated back towards the hallway they had just emerged from, while Frost looked at Teranar and said, “Well fine. Party in the hallway, don't wait up! Not like you'd want to come anyway, being so cold and all,” and then walked out of the room, while Teranar made a face at him behind his back. The Zio stomped over to a computer terminal, and held one of its hands out. A lone cable extended from it, and it looked to Teranar, as he walked over and started to look for a place to plug it in.


The elevator on the third floor opened up and a platoon of Arachnos soldiers poured out, at their head was Nakal Stormbringer, a man with teal hair, a long, black, tattered cloak that covered his face, and black and blue armor adorned with metallic skulls. A night widow slunk out of the shadows to report to him that there were two heroes in the hallway ahead. Nakal asked her who they were, and then grinned broadly.
“You're certain it was a man in blue tights, a blue bandana, blue hair, and an out of place brown overcoat?”
“Yes sir,” The widow replied.
“And a robotic girl with pink hair?”
“Yes sir.”
“I don't know who the girl is, but the mutant MUST be Frost Flow. Fantastic. Send the shock troops in, I'll attack immedately afterwards.”
Nakal grinned to himself. “Finally. I have you, my arch nemesis!”


Teranar sat on the Zio Technautica's shoulder while numbers and lines of code scrolled through the terminal. He leaned in closer, tried a moment to understand it, than asked the robot, “Find anything yet?”
“Not yet,” Replied the robot, “Its all encoded, I have the code to decrypt it but it will take time. The quickest way to do this is to download the entire database on the cloning project 'Elven Two' and look at it later.”
From behind them they could hear more shouts, gunfire, energy blasts, and the sound of wind and ice evident of a battle behind them. Teranar ignored the fighting and asked, “So you found it but don't know anything? Can't you tell me anything yet? You're reading it.”
The robot heaved a metallic sigh and said, “I TOLD you already I have to decrypt it! All I can do right now is download it and hope the scientists were dumb enough to actually put it in the clearly marked folders I'm downloading. We'll have to look somewhere else, somewhere safer. And speaking of safety, isn't there a fight going on? Maybe you should go help fight instead of annoying me.”
“Oh come on, I did LOTS of fighting getting here!”
“Terry... don't start. Didn't you spend the second fight in here standing around eating a doughnut and then at the last minute punch someone and yelled I HELPED! as loud as you could?! Get off my robot's shoulder and go do some fighting! We ARE in here solely because of you!!”
Teranar sighed and started to float off towards the fighting, muttering to himself.


Nakal watched cowards run around the corner, many half frozen and barely standing. He randomly picked one out and punched him as hard as he could in the chest, probably killing the man. Cowards, all of them. He sighed and muttered to himself about having to do things himself, when he suddenly thought he saw or felt something out of the corner of his eye. Instinctively he punched at what seemed like air, and made contact! He punched a man out of nothing, no, not a man, a freak. A freak of nature, with pointy ears and animal skin. The freak held a sword, and declared something. Nakal didn't care. He balled his fists and made ready to fight, glowing brightly with superhuman strength and power, the very air around him flickering and glowing, as if on fire. He charged at the freak.

Teranar had fought many a metahuman in his time in this world, but this one took the cake. Took fourty cakes. This was terrible. He hit as hard as the Zio Technautca, no HARDER, harder than anyone he had ever known, his sword slashes seemed to heal as fast as he could make them, and the air was no escape. His opponent seemed to be on fire, hot to the touch, and tireless. “Dammit, why won't you fall down, on fire man?!” burst out Teranar finally. The superhuman sneered and replied, “I'm Nakal Stormbringer, I am the PINNACLE of what science and mutations can do to a human! I have been made better, gone beyond, ANYTHING, Metahuman or no! I am the superior being, and I WILL CRUSH YOU!!” With that he wound up a mighty punch, and connected square with Teranar's face, sending him into a wall – and Teranar's Jaw onto the floor.

Nakal walked over to his now defaced, mutilated opponent. He picked him up by the neck and grinned, staring straight at the freak's deformed face. Blood was oozing all over his armor – wonderful, nothing says he had a good day of work like bloodstains all over his armor. Suddenly the freak tried to smile, held his hands out, and Nakal felt like something left him, a slight twinge of pain, nothing more than a papercut. He averted his eyes a moment when this happened, and looked back. NO. The freak's face was back! His jaw had grown back! Suddenly sharp pain tore through Nakal's stomach. The freak had run him through! He threw the freak as hard as he could down the hall, taking his sword with him, and looked at his wound. It was already starting to heal back, bleeding so little that he hardly lost any blood. Then he heard the distinct noise of energy blasts being generated, before power bolts slammed into his back. He looked behind him and saw the pink-haired robot the night widow had reported. He snarled. No Frost Flow. No bounty. No revenge. He was already worn out from the freak who wouldn't die, and now a robotic girl? And at any moment Frost Flow would be along to nail down the coffin – no. A tactical retreat. He swooshed his cape and marched for the elevators, ignoring the occasional fire form the robotic girl.


Frost Flow rounded the corner to see blood everywhere, someone's jaw on the floor, and an extremely worn looking Teranar, covered in blood. He ran over, with a concerned look on his face. “Terry! Oh my god, what happened? Are you allright?!”
Teranar rubbed his new jaw a moment and replied, “Yeah. Peachy. Just some flaming superhuman named Nakal Stormsomething. Bringer I think. Damn, not even the Zio hits that hard. What in the hell was he?!”
Flow's eyes narrowed. “Did you say Nakal Stormbringer?”
“Yup.”
“His hair teal, black cloak, skull motif?”
“Yeah. Looked like he was on fire. Cost me a jaw and a lot of blood, had to drain him to reconstruct myself. Didn't finish either, still missing some bones.”
“Oh geez... I'm sorry Terry. I shoulda been here, but I was still irked about you taking your time and... its my fault.”
“Sheesh, calm down, I'm really hard to kill, you know that. But what was he?”
Flow sighed and said, “He was a council experiment gone wrong, went on a mad rampage, killed a lot of good people, even some heroes somehow dispite the med teleporters, before I somehow stopped him. Seems his only weakness is to freeze him so his body's massive metabolism shuts down... are you SURE you're ok?”
Teranar laughed. “Just a flesh wound!”


The Zio Technautca unplugged itself from the console as Teranar, Flow, and Valciana walked into the lab again. “So how did it go?” Asked the Zio.
“Seems I met Flow's Archnemesis. Cost me a jaw and some blood. Gonna need a few days to sleep this one off.” Replied Teranar
“But... will you be allright? Hang on, I can-”
Teranar cut the Zio off, “FIRST we need to get the hell out of here if you're done.”
The robot nodded, and said, “Yes, if Valciana will help me there's a weakness in the wall to our right, we can punch and blast through, and fly back to Paragon safely. I've erased the computer here, so that we are the only ones with the research data. They shouldn't have any of this data.”
Teranar nodded and said, “Good. If they're willing to send both Crey and Arachnos at us, they really must have perfectly cloned me, powers and all. The last thing we need is a new breed of Paragon Protectors based completely off of a hard to kill smartmouthed fay.”

(( End Part 1, more to come! ))

Not bad, not bad at all! I await the next installment.

Inside a secret supergroup base, Teranar wrinkled his nose as he looked at the computer in front of him. The decoder program was working ok, and everything was coming out. It was indeed the information concerning him and cloning that they were after, but it wasn't at all what he was expecting. There were mentionings of a client, someone interested in this cloning information, and reports on Crey units raiding Oranbega for books, mystical tomes, and other information.
While staring at it a young, blue haired girl wearing a loose blue-green sweater and wearing a long green skirt walked over and put a mug of fresh coffee next to him, before leaning over his shoulder and asking him, "Find out anything?"
Teranar sighed and replied, "Yes, Sefra, but it doesn't make much sense. They're obviously working FOR someone, someone interested in cloning, and cloning something other than humans. Here it shows where they attempted to clone a demon and failed miserably. Elsewhere it talks about how they attempted to clone some heavily super powered catgirls, vampires, werewolves, soldiers hopped up on Super soldier serium - in fact in that case they tried our friend Mr. Stormbringer." Upon mentioning Nakal Teranar rubbed his jaw, looking rather annoyed.

Sefra looked at him concerned and asked, "Does it still hurt? I know a few remedies for that, in fact I think I can whip up a potion that could fix it up just right, the other day Amy was talking about one that mended bones that she uses on injured Cabal. Speaking of which, how are your ribs? You kept rubbing them the entire flight back."

Teranar gave a small smile and said to her, "I'm fine. Its just, well, new. I probably should avoid hard to chew food for a day. Its not really easy just regenerating like that, and given HOW I do it I don't like doing it often."
Sefra frowned and said nothing. Teranar went back to reading over the reports. Then he spoke up again. "Says here they raided Oranbega. The same part of the city where they tried to copy me and made Ranaret. But that doesn't make sense."
"Why not?" ASked Sefra.
"Because. Crey doesn't dabble in magic or hocus pocus. That's why I'm wondering about their interest in me. I heard they once tried making a demon or something and it went crazy in their lab, tore the place apart. So why would they want ANYTHING from Oranbega, much less copying books on the ceremony they used to make Ranaret? They've already cloned people, that's where the Protectors come from. So why all this magical info? And they STILL don't mention who their client is. All they do mention is robotics research with them as well."
"Well," Sefra added, "Ranaret IS the only clone of a magical being that I can think of, transgender or no, or at least of you, I'm not too up to date on this stuff, but its something to base their cloning of you on. And you have to admit Terry you're pretty damn strong and hard to kill. I mean, that Nakal, he's stronger than anyone I can think of, he's stronger than the Zio Technautica, a robot suit, and you stood up to him and only lost a jaw and had some broken ribs. When you think about it, you're pretty super."
"Or you're buttering me up to try to get another favor out of me."
"Pssh. You wish."

Teranar sighed and checked his phone. "Hey. I need to go chat with my Longbow CO., so I need to take off. Be careful heading home, OK? There's rumor of Rikti around, and the usual spooks hanging around Salamanca. Call me if you need anything." With that Teranar got up and wandered over to the teleporters in the next room.
Sefra frowned and looked indignant, before looking at the computer herself. Everything looked exactly like Teranar had said, except something caught her eye, something Teranar hadn't outright said.
The client that Crey was working for were also after both Teranar and his shadowy clone Ranaret.

Sefra hadn't felt like going back to the apartment she shared with Teranar in Salamanca. Instead she used her pass as a registered hero of Paragon to go to Pocket D instead. The interdimensional nightclub was sometimes her only refuge when she wanted to avoid people she knew. Teranar was being stubborn and had brought up longbow again, something Sefra hated that he was a part of, and he neglected to tell her the full extent of how much trouble he was in. And they still lacked enough information to know EXACTLY what was going on.

So there she was, sitting in a corner on the blueside of the club, sipping at a fruit punch she had ordered, looking around the club. There were drunks at the bar hitting on uninterested women, she caught Frost Flow out of the corner of her eye, he was arguing with his Ex Girlfriend again. Then she saw a girl, a bit taller than her, with long black hair in a ponytail, wearing a black cheerleader outfit with red highlights and an Anarchy symbol on its chest, and over it a long black trenchcoat. In fact she seemed a touch familiar. But before she could place the girl in her mind she walked over, and sat in front of Sefra, beer mug in hand. She looked directly at Sefra, and said, "Hello Sefra. How are you? Looking rather down tonight."

Sefra blinked at her, and demanded, "How do you know my name?"
The girl smiled at Sefra. "I know a lot about you. Why your parents are dead, why you live with a fairy knight, that you're a Witch different from the Cabal and how you're both friends and at odds with them, that your favorite color is blue-green, you wish Terry would quit Freedom Corps, even though you need the money, and I can help with that last bit."

Sefra looked at the girl intently, then her eyes widened as the realization hit her. "You're Ranaret, his clone!"
Ranaret giggled, "Bright as always, Seffy."
"But wait," Interjected Sefra, "Terry's no knight, I'm friends with the Cabal, and we're not short on money!"
"Oh really?" Asked Ranaret, "Are you SURE? What do you know about Teranar's past anyway? He was engaged to Bell, but didn't seem to go to pieces over her death, in fact he seemed to take it pretty well. Rather odd, don't you think? And if you two were short on money, do you think he'd tell you?"

Sefra went quiet and looked down at her drink, when Ranaret spoke up again, "You know... you're a pretty good witch, aren't you?"
Sefra narrowed her eyes and looked at Ranaret, "Why...?"
Ranaret leaned in closer to Sefra. "Because... you need money, and I have money. I need help... and here is a nice young magician with the right spells for my needs. So, you scratch my back, I scratch your back, and Teranar can quit being a pawn of Longbow. How's that sound?"
Sefra went quiet again and sat there, in thought, and shivered a little. Ranaret took swigs of her beer. She thought about
everything Ranaret said, and eventually spoke up.

"... Ran? I'm in. I can't depend on Terry for everything, he's going to kill himself."
Ranaret stood up grinning, and clapped. "I KNEW you would, Seffy! Don't you worry, I'll make SURE everything runs smoothly. Now come on, I'll introduce you to the other two guys who'll be coming along! But first, because THEY don't know, lemmie tell you what's up. You know how Crey's trying to clone Teranar and I? Weeeeeeell last night after your friends were done smashing up a lab I had a nice look around, and found out a few things. First of all, I need to know who's after me-er us so I can properly beat them down. Also I need to know WHY they want to clone magical beings so badly, and why Crey's only being paid in technical information. Anyway, meet the others!"

Ranaret then grabbed Sefra by the arm and dragged her down, across the dance hall, and into the red part of Pocket D, over to a table where two men were sitting. One was an older man, wearing glasses and a lab coat, tapping away at a laptop and muttering to himself about how his robots would be the superior ones, and next to him was a muscular Teal-haired man wearing a black formal millitary coat unbuttoned with a red scorpion patch, and otherwise dressed in black. Ranaret addressed them, "Gentlemen, I've found another pair of helping hands! Sefra, you already know them, but formally let me introduce you to Dr. Cynep Pobvot, and Nakal Stormbringer! Nakal, Doctor, this is Sefra the Witch!"

Sefra very shyly waved and gave a barely audable hi.