"Well, that was a waste of two hours," Lonny muttered, walking back to his RC with an angry trudge. "Of course it was right under the radiator. That was the same room we started looking for it in, after all, and you always find things right where you started off. Except when you don't. If narrative convention was a person, I'd tell them to be a little more consistent with all this crap."
His mood brightened up when he noticed a distinctive form just a little further down the hall, covered in a black shell and with prominent white eyes. Not only another carapacians, but another Dersite! The other being seemed to be carrying an unnecessary number of weapons, namely a pair of crossed battle-axes mounted on its back, but Lonny ascribed that to being from another department. He knew how some Assassins could get about weaponry, and he expected that there were Disentanglers and Sue-centric Floaters that felt the same. Well, there was one way to find out the details: conversation!
"Hey! Hello!" Lonny said cheerfully, walking up to the other Dersite and turning to make eye contact. "Wow, I thought I was only Dersite in HQ, and here you are! Neither of us is alone now, and that's great! We can share experiences, have common cultural reference points, and all those other things people like! What did you do back on the homeworld?"
The other turned around in response to the voice, and Lonny was briefly taken aback. The being in front of him wasn't just another Dersite; it matched Lonny's appearance in almost every respect. Without the over-the-top weaponry, the only major difference he could see were the other's eyes, sparkling with tiny motes of red glitter and glaring with blind malice and judgement. Lonny had dealt with Suvian character replacements before, but had never expected to see one of himself.
"Out of my way, dweeb," the other Lonny snapped, reaching for one of the weapons strapped to his back. "You've got some nerve getting in front of me. Back of the freakin' line, or I'll show you what color your guts are."
Under normal circumstances, Lonny would have asked what line, made a snarky comment about what the other was waiting for out in the middle of the hallway, or something else of the sort. But back in his home fansession, he'd encountered a fair share of alternate versions of himself, recognized early on how dangerous they could get, and had developed an ironclad strategy for dealing with them.
Lunging forward, Lonny drove his foot into a spot directly between the chest and abdomen of the double, who fell down, his wind knocked out.
All right, so it wasn't an ironclad plan so much as knowing his own weaknesses, but Lonny wasn't complaining. He took advantage of the lapse to grab one of the battle-axes off of the double's back, planning to knock the aggressor out with its handle. However, as soon as it separated from its holder, the axe quickly dropped to the ground, and Lonny grunted in surprise from the sudden increase in weight. Instants later, the other Dersite rose with a light chuckle, recovering his wind far faster than he should have.
"Don't think I'm as weak as you are just because I look like you, dingus," the double snapped with a patronizing sneer. Effortlessly, the other Lonny picked up the axe from the ground, wrenched it out of the PPC Agent's hands, and pointed it at him menacingly. "Advantage lost."
He then bent over again, stunned from another hard blow to the sternum enhanced from Lonny's convenient position underneath him. The PPC Agent took advantage of the momentary lapse to scramble to his feet.
"Bad angle, ha ha, better luck next time, I've learned I've gotta scram bye!" Lonny said, his words emerging so quickly that they almost blurred together. Without wasting another second, Lonny bolted down the hall, partially hating himself for being bested so easily.
Lonny had to admit, the first part of his strategy hadn't been all that effective. But the backup second part, "find someone who knows what they're doing, tended to fare much better.
-----
Back at the RC, Copernicus straightened his sash, glancing at the vision of himself reflected off of the inactive television. He pulled at the top, letting it slide more evenly off of his shoulder gears. Even though he was only headed out to get supplies, he needed to make sure his flash patch was secure and prominent. He wouldn't want to be mistaken for an intruder or a lost DoSAT experiment again, after all. Once was enough.
Waving goodbye to the RC 52080 minis, he pulled open the door, only to find himself face-to-face with another being, approximately his size and body shape, but obviously fully robotic in nature. It also had a wider stance, darker coloration, two glowing red eyes, and most prominently, two massive cannons prodtruding from its shoulders. Upon seeing him, the machine tried to push past him multiple times, but each attempt was blocked by Copernicus's unyielding bulk. It settled for leaning in to peer over the golem's shoulder at the RC's interior.
"Woah, this is a sick-rippin' pad you've got here, my home-brother!" it exclaimed, its words tinged with an unplaceable accent.
"Excuse me?"
"Seems like a most radical place for this bro to hang his hooks and keep tight, you know what I'm saying?"
"No. No, I do not."
"Aw, man, don't be a stickler. You've got to admit this place is mondo suited to my grand vibes! I deserve to call your zone here my spot to crash!"
"Nothing that you're saying is in any way resemblant of actual language, and what little I understand I interpret as confrontational. I am going to close and lock the door now."
"What? You've got no spot calling those shots, bud, and I say that in full-"
Copernicus pulled the door down, cutting off the intruder's words with a powerful clang, and immediately strode over to Anersin the mini-Colossus' charging station and pulled a switch concealed behind it. The door made a low whirring sound as the seal engaged, and Copernicus noted with satisfaction the groans and muffled complaints that issued from the other side.
-----
Out of breath, Lonny rounded the last corner to his RC before drastically decreasing his speed. He clutched a hand to his chest and bent down, coughing slightly. Whatever his class of carapacian was supposed to do back on Derse evidently had not included running with any degree of speed for any notable distance. That or he was out of shape, which was a possibility that he dismissed immediately.
"All right," he panted, slowly regathering his strength. "I've got my evil double running around here. What makes a double? Maybe it... hoo... maybe it escaped from an alternate universe. Maybe it's from... the future. Maybe from a magic mirror. Like, it sucked out my jerkness or something. I'd remember that last one if it happened, but maybe I was asleep." He coughed again. "No, those are dumb. I'm dumb when I'm tired. But Nick will know. He's good with this stuff. Just another few doors and I'll be back to ask him."
Shaking his head, Lonny glanced up, hoping to see the familiar door of his RC a short distance away. He did, but unfortunately, he also saw an eight-foot brownish-yellow machine blasting away at said door with a pair of massive shoulder cannons.
"Yo, I'm only gonna say this once, brah!" it howled, projecting its words over its cannons' dull and repeated booms. "I'm gonna crack this fridge if you don't pony up and free your zone, and we both know that!"
Lonny backed away slowly, taking care not to make any loud noises or bump into anything. Once he rounded the corner, he scrambled away, slowly and quietly due to both his relative exhaustion and his hope that whatever he'd just seen wouldn't hear him.
Or, he thought, I can go get backup, and then we can deal with that thing, and then Nick can help out with jerk-me. I like my new plan. It is a better plan. I don't have to fight robots by myself with the new plan.
Making a few random turns to make sure he was good and lost, Lonny suddenly stumbled into a hallway he'd never been in before. He was sure he'd never been there before, because he'd definitely remember a hallway smelling of dead plants and filled with almost a dozen sparkly-looking entities, one of which spun around moments after his arrival and stared at the Dersite with vacant confusion. A human-looking Agent was slumped at the wall across from the Suvian, distinguishable from her in part by the fact that only the Sue had a slow stream of glittery blood trickling from her nose. A little further down the hallway, a second smaller Suvian, evidently noticing Lonny's presence, glanced up and hissed.
"One of these days," Lonny muttered. "One of these days I'd like to make a simple, straightforward plan that doesn't have to deal with any new variables until I'm almost done carrying it out."
((Ugh, I had half of this written on another computer yesterday, and then it froze and I had to redo it all on my tablet. The description is not nearly as good now, and Stu-Copernicus was supposed to be annoying, but now he just comes across as incomprehensible because I couldn't remember any of his lines and made up about half of his new slang. Which might be... better? I don't know.
Also, this might not be supposed to go here, but I'm trying to keep chronology moderately stable. Then again, this post is so long that it might start warping time from its sheer gravitational mass.))