Doppelganger Visits: BARFEGANGERS

Doppelganger Visits: BARFEGANGERS Jul 25, 2015 1:08:27 GMT -5

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Post by shrimp on Jul 25, 2015 1:08:27 GMT -5

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copynat

here to stay even when i'm gone
when i close my eyes through the passage of time

The world is tinted green, shifting in and out of focus as the mechanics of his eyes struggle with the life that he's been drawn back into. His head feels disconnected from his body, every part of him frozen - or stilled, unresponsive, tired - but for the muscles in his face. His eyes flick to the side, and his hand blurs into threes by his ear before becoming one once again.

He curls his fingers, but the hand doesn't belong to him. If this is what it's like to be dead, he's terrified - but his still heart doesn't pick up the pace to match the adrenaline that doesn't roar through his frame. Nat was dead, but he's not. His mind focuses like a camera on little things, the rest of the world blurring around that one object - struggling, aching, giving up to let triple-images take his life.

"Where am I?"

The voice is right but the inflection isn't; his tongue, or maybe it's his brain, presses weight onto the wrong half of the sentence like a machine trying to work itself out. It can't be right, he can't be here to stay when he's really gone, and maybe his words know that. Nat's eyelids click shut for a moment, and he can see the spark somewhere in his head as the rest of him comes to life in a matter of moments. To the right of his head, fingers twitch and move too fast, running down his cheek, down the seam where his head joins his body, over crusts of something that could be blood. For a moment he fingers the gash, and Copynat can't see as much as he feels the way his head bobbles in its newly reattached socket. A sharp giggle bursts from him, his voice coming out right, the laughter coming out just right.

The finger brings life where it touches, and Copynat presses it over where he would have had a heart.

In a moment he's on his feet, his entire being thrumming with energy he can barely contain; Copynat stretches on his tippy-toes, reaching up towards the sky where all that remains of his hovercraft is a momentary flicker that with a squint he can kind of see. He reaches up for the hovercraft, stretching as high as he can go mind churning with the idea that he's really not meant to be here; his body has his arms spread, like a child who survived a Reaping giving grace to whichever god they have never believed in. "Pick me up!" Copynat screams on a laugh, and he laughs like it's all a huge joke with a twisted grimace hidden in perfect ecstasy. He's an image made in the dead half of Nat Krigel, and he's here to stay through all of time.

The metal hand does not gather him into a delicate hold. Copynat can stay on his toes forever, feeling neither the ache nor pain of a dancer. When he falls back it's not out of exhaustion, but for the blur that whips by him and tumbles apart into Replicelya and Doppelgunner laughing together on the floor. The picture of their antics clicks to hover in his mind: Replicelya on the bottom, Doppelgunner urging her on from her back, Copynat is grinning with laughter dead and the grimace smoothened from his face. It's when the image of their kiss lights up in his mind that Copynat groans and rolls his eyes. His voice is a perfect whine: "Guuys, can you not?"

He's pulled into the dance of a strange trio where Doppelgunner is leaping over him, and Copynat is left to catch himself from falling onto Replicelya. "You're the bott-t-tom, baby Krigel. Don't bother trying to top me." Her teasing voice brings pleasant memories- ries- ries- Copynat flips himself to the side and grins up at Doppelgunner.

"I don't even want to try," and apparently sincerity has been programmed into him, or something else, because he can tell he's beaming up at Doppelgunner like some kind of trusting child. Doppelgunner crouches before him and leans in close. Like the first time- ime- ime- Copynat's breath catches in the briefest moment that Doppelgunner has her lips whispering over his own. They're only separated by the words that Doppelgunner drops between them, like a challenge, and maybe he's up for that.

"Yes."

The world goes bl-

-ack.

Copynat tears his gaze slowly from Doppelgunner to focus on Replicelya. A tiny pout has crept on his face as he studies Replicelya's own features, and he says, "Are you scared?" The words aren't quite inflected in the right way, but they pass as Replicelya's face blurs into multiples of her in his mind.

It's like he's drunk, but that's ridiculous, because machines can't be drunk. Copynat shakes his wobbling head, grasping at it before it rolls right back off his shoulders, leaving him back where he started. Ha, ha, ha, ha, h-

Back where he started, on the floor with his head duct-taped to his neck, his entire body a single point of pain at the fault of. He remembers that much, at least.

Copynat's eyes flicker to the side, like an instinct or programming telling him that they are all here, in this place, too. All of them. Whatever that's left of his insides twist into scrap, and on cue words scroll by his eyes - not the script he reads, but orders in binary turned into something he can understand.

Orion Hammerfell killed you.

Orion Hammerfell was a friend, maybe, made guilty by- by- by- by-

Circe Lyon let you die.

She'd pressed her fingers to his skin when he couldn't f- f- f- f- f-

They never wanted you around.

Not Orion, not Circe, not Kirito or Kiena or anyone still breathing, the idea made realer still by the threat of losing his head all over again. They all want to live, so they killed you. Copynat focuses on two points in the distance, and then once on the image of two sleeping tributes a hundred feet away. Don't they deserve to- to- to- to- Uncertainty curves into confusion into rage that boils deep in the pit of his stomach. His vision trembles, or maybe it's his own body shaking with anger.

In moments, in minutes, he's crossed the distance between them, between her, between him - two, one, one, each of them far but not far enough to feel his hands on their warm skin, like their life can free the chill fixed in his metal bones. He leaves blood-like imprints of his hands wher Copynat grips their arms tight; on Orion's sword is a single splash of the same substance where the original Nat Krigel would have stained Fauxrion's sword. A single finger draws a line across Circe's neck, giggles escaping in short, frantic bursts from his lips.

The words are spat through the tremors of fury, caught and made light in the chuffs of hysterical laughter.

Orion.

"You're-"

Circe.

"-going-"

Kiena.

"-to-"

Kirito.

"-die."

kings
never die

DOPPELGUNNER LA 2.ORRE

i keep you like an oath
may nothing but death do us part
you'll find your way
and may death find you alive

Doomsday rewinding in fast forward, Gunner La Torre’s triumphant war cry ricochets through rust and decay, somehow still more alive than anything else in the Arena. Despite death, despite being shot down by her own lover, despite her head exploding like a blood firework, she is an image of victory. Carried on Elya Johnwayne’s back, her legs are wrapped around the one-eyed girl’s waist with one arm lazily slung across her neck. They run. Riot. Rampage. Copping a feel between puffs on an infamous hundred dollar joint, she tilts the other girl’s chin up and curls into her. Mouth to mouth, she exhales a smokey breath into Elya’s lungs, grinning against her lips.

One wonders what effect the dubious smoke could possibly be having on their mechanical minds.

Refusing to unhook herself from the brunette, Doppelgunner acts as if the breaths being passed back and forth between them are an act of resuscitation and another push to her chest might be all that’s needed to bring them both back to life. Fighting the opposition of inconvenient angles, it’s not long before Replicelya’s grasp breaks and they both tumble to the ground. A blur jumps right over the sprawl of their tangled limbs and there’s a slight whine implicit in the air that sounds an awful lot like: Guyyyyyyys~ can you not?

One of Doppelgunner’s hands shoots out with illogical speed, grabbing Copynat’s ankle. He falls as she pulls herself up to leapfrog over him with a wicked snicker of sadistic satisfaction. “You’re the bottom, baby Krigel,” she says, voice short circuiting slightly on her t-t-ts, “don’t bother trying to top me.”

Casually shaking out the ravaged tangles of her hair, she flicks her eyes down at him as he rewards her affectionate teasing with the smile of an accidental saint. “I don’t even want to try,” he counters with an expression that is fifty percent perfect teeth and fifty percent flawless sincerity.

Crouching down in front of him, the mechanical mirror image of a memory they’ve both been hardwired with leans in until her lips brush ever-so-slightly against his when she speaks. “Yes you do,” and the frail friction of those simple words takes the second Nat Krigel’s first kiss all over again, as if she thinks she has the right to sully his every reincarnation with her scandalous mouth.

The thing is: Both sets of their programing say that she does.

His head bobbles against the snickering grin of his antagonist as Replicelya claims her welcome, ruffling his hair until his entire head rocks on its hinge. It wobbles precariously, but doesn’t fall entirely off. Catching a glimpse of the wiring within, Doppelgunner mimics the teetering motion as she remembers that she’s supposed to have lost her head as well in a blast of betrayal. Fingers trailing across her own collarbone, there is no bloodied seam or evidence of the detachment Circe Lyon caused… except for a heavy chain of gold and crystal meth that has been returned to her.

There is a tracking system installed within her and it says that the living, breathing girl from Two is nestled into Fourth Wheel's arms somewhere just off to her left. The necklace that once claimed ownership of Circe comes free in her hand as the other continues prying at her counterfeit flesh, looking for the wound she knows must be somewhere other than her lie of a heart. A bloodless bullet hole marks her forehead. Nothing is coming out of the wide, empty space like it should, visible proof that she is exactly as hollow as she always claimed to be.

Copynat’s systems fail in Doppelgunner’s honor, but rebooting switches his attention settings back to default and only moments later he’s sprinting toward the sleeping pair of Tributes they’ve come to haunt. Hooking two fingers into one of Replicelya’s belt loops, she snares the other girl before she can follow in his footsteps. With a simple tug, she falls for her. She has to — the algorithms of their false hearts demand it. “You were the one I wanted,” and something about her voice implies the intimacy of a whisper, despite being precisely calibrated to carry into the distance just far enough to be overheard. Latching the weighted symbol of her gold chain around Replicelya’s neck, she leans in to press her lips to the eye patch covering the brutal scar beneath. “I’ve seen worse,” Doppelgunner says, quoting what the god of herself told Elya when they first met, “but I’ve never seen better.”

The Capitol's best-effort Elya Johnwayne returns later in the night, Orion snoring like the falling of a hammer next to the blood-and-flesh of Circe Lyon. Though her clothes and smirk and dignity are conspicuously absent, there is no mistaking this girl from the one that locked pinkies with the last Johnwayne, swearing no division before death.

Replicelya made no inverted promises to let the death knell of her canon sever such ties. Still, she keeps in character. Her amusement vaults upward and out of her throat, a quiet riot of grim laughter.

"This is rich," she snickers, eyeing the sleeping giant at the girl's side. The declaration starts from a place of amusement, but a note of jealousy edges its way in. By the time she's finished chuckling, the whole thing sounds hollow. Her stone-set face loses its light, lines of laughter uncreasing and reversing, dropping from half-smile to half-frown. "Looks like someone's capable of learning after all."

Kneeling next to the supine career, she leans in, burying her lips in the golden hair that covers Circe's left ear. Voice hushed, she elaborates: "Using Orion just like I used you. Just like you let Gunner use you." The words snake out of her mouth through the thin smirk of superiority that Elya had saved for the sweetest of victories in life.

She plants a kiss on Circe's temple, runs deft fingers through the tangles of blood-crusted blonde, locks her dead grey eye on the green ones in front of her. It is intimacy, absent of whatever love, whatever lust, whatever interest Elya Johnwayne might have shown Circe in life. Her small smile is as cold, as dispassionate as her stare.

Hand still cradling her once-lover's head, she draws in closer, until every exhale registers on skin. "What's the matter, Circe Lyon?" she murmurs, so quiet that the words wouldn't be out of place shared across a pillow. "Can't spend a night on your own? Better to be in the company of someone you don't love than all alone with someone you despise?"

Her lips press to Circe's forehead, dead center. "Can't you see that he's better off without you?" Her hand trails down the side of the Lyon's neck, two fingers gently tracing the short route the false Orion's sword took across Nat Krigel. "Cut him loose." She instructs, demands.

She steals a kiss - Gunner's chain dangling from her neck all the while, swinging like a pendulum over Circe's heart. For a moment, her programming fights itself: she loses herself in the other girl for a breath, for two. With a sigh, she pulls away, eye averted.

"Cover your blind spot, Lyon. Here —" she pulls the bloodstained leather patch from her face, revealing the scarred socket beneath. Gently, she tugs it over Circe's forehead, brining it to rest over her jade left eye. She runs two fingers around the strap, adjusting the blonde hair underneath. The gesture is a tender one, Replicelya relinquishing her cruelty in favor of Elya Johnwayne's rare soft spot for her district partner - for her friend. "This should help."