Mind Games (IC)

[Darksider42]

"Enemy of my enemy and all that." Rift said in agreement with Trevor as he flew above them. He let the sound of feet against the hard ground reflect against the walls and map out their path beyond the light of Marks flame. The universe seemed to follow a pattern as far as he could tell. Hell, Daisy here is at least bearable compared to ours. He thought as he unslung his guitar. They maybe heading towards possible allies, but that didn't stop the fact there could be enemies looking for them underground.

[Avenger Assembled]

Down below, the team made contact with their most unlikely group of allies. It took a moment to pick out the warbots as they lurked along the flank of the sewer: the Foundry's best here were not the sleek, menacing monuments to destruction that were the front line on their own world; rather the warbots were closer to trashcans with missiles attached than anything else. Far, far down below, as the team closed ranks together to ward off any hostile threat, the robot squadron led them to meet the lord of the Foundry, the Bronze Behemoth, Talos!

The armored giant looked...shabby down in the sewer, for all that he'd built a headquarters behind him that looked busy, filled to the brim with bustling if rusty robots, and less imposing than his Earth-Prime self as he rose to greet his sewer-arriving guests, the ten foot robot towering over all of them. "Good afternoon. Welcome to the Robot League. I am Talos. I understand you have become...misplaced."

[Electra]

Erin stepped forward. Normally she'd allow Mark to talk, since he was both better at it and nominally the team leader, but she was rattled enough to want to shake some answers out of somebody, anybody. "What exactly do you want with us?" she demanded. "Do you know why we're supposed to be here? Are you some kind of good guy in this world?" She watched him and the whole room closely, ready to strike out at anything that seemed to be a threat.

[Avenger Assembled]

"I am Talos. Long I have fought a war of machine against flesh against my maker and master Daedalus, and long has he forced me underground. As for the rest...you mean...you don't know?" Talos sounded uneasy at that. "I had assumed you were prisoners of the Syndicate who had escaped, clones or doubles from a parallel reality. Your words confirm the second, but who are you?" said the great robot in a voice like a rusting speaker system. "How did you come to be in this dimension?You, monster," he said, pointing to Erin. "How do you come to speak at all?"

[Gizmo]

"Speaks because she's a person, not a monster," Midnight interjected in his unnervingly filtered voice, quiet and without heat yet carrying easily to those around him. "Here at the whim of an unfortunately powerful madman. Switched for our parallel selves. Like to rectify that situation." His red lenses narrowed in his featureless mask, and if he found the towering automaton intimidating, his squared shoulders and glowering expression did nothing to show it.

[Lone Star]

Midnight, take it easy. We just want to get home, Talos." He had never encountered the evil version of Talos, but the machine in front of him looked powerful enough to fight the strongest of heroes. He hoped he'd never take the evil Talos on.

[Avenger Assembled]

"But we can't just go home ourselves," said Mark, giving Daisy a worried look before he spoke fearlessly to the great corroded bronze robot, Talos' skin a lovely green. "This is Daisy, and we're going to save her." Save her from me. Save her from the man I am here. Our world is different than yours, and we're taking her back. Our other big worry is what our doubles are up to in the other reality."

"You are right to be worried. I know your faces," Talos added. "All of you. That you spoke to each other without bickering, that you planned to help those you found...I knew you could not be them. Especially you," it said, pointing a bronze figure first at Erin, then at Trevor. "I have the technology to return you to your own world, as well as send your ally with you. It will be the work of some hours. But..." It fixed a clanking eye on all of them. "What will you do there? Will you send help?"

[Electra]

"What sort of help are you talking about?" Erin asked, still a bit defensive after the robot's comments. What the hell was she like on this world, anyway? "What kind of help is going to really help in a world where everyone who is good in our world is evil or crazy or both? There are rules about what we can do to other dimensions, but if there's something that would really help you, we could at least try to get it to you."

[Avenger Assembled]

"When others from your world have visited this place, they have promised to help one day against the Syndicate. But never do they come." The robot began to pace, his joints squealing as he went. "So many friends and allies gone; so many champions of right defeated. And those who wear the face of my greatest enemies leave me to fight alone, forever. But still, you are...very young. I have a duty to help you."

[Gizmo]

"Fine," Midnight grated through the filter in his mask. "Favour for a favour. We'll do what we can, but our priority has to be getting our doubles off our own world." The lanky teen crossed his arms, considering. They'd managed to reduce a significant portion of Anti-Earth's Claremont to rubble in the time they'd been here; with even less restraint, who knew what havoc their counterparts might have wreaked. "Can you switch us out, the way we were brought here?"

[Electra]

"Look," Erin said, folding her arms and watching the robot. "After what we've seen of this world, we'd be happy to blow up a piece of it in the name of fighting the good fight, but we also have to protect our own world from the chunk of this world that's over there right now. So whatever it is, it has to be something we can do on the run. What is it that you want us to do? What's actually going to help you out?" Personally, she had no idea what would fix this place, but maybe the robot had a plan.

[Avenger Assembled]

"If you cannot return to aid me in this place, then..." Talos sounded like his Earth-Prime self for a moment, before his gaze fell on Daisy's wide-eyed look of fear. "I...I, no! I will not be like the monsters I fight! I shall aid you for goodness' sake, because you are innocents who need rescuing, not for gain or desire to see my enemies fall! If one or two of you have the technical prowess to assist me, we can have a portal built within the night!" Talos struck himself on the chest with a resounding gong. "Yes! For right and valor, we shall do it!"

"We'll help!" agreed Mark, knowing he didn't need to ask his friends about that. "But how will it work?" he asked. "I mean, are you just going to send us straight there from here, or are we going to switch with ourselves?" he asked, echoing Trevor's earlier question with a glance Midnight's way. Hopefully Talos just talked like this because he was a ham in any universe, not because he was actually rusting in the brain somewhere.

"You will be pulled between worlds, replacing your doubles as they replace you, passing each other in the aether. The Syndicate thinks they have blocked dimensional travel, but they are unaware of my ability to pass by their defenses! Quickly, is one of you mighty? I have a very large gear that must be placed!"

[Electra]

Erin raised her hand. "I can move whatever you need moved," she volunteered, "and if I can't, we can work together on it. Just tell us what you want to do." She stepped forward to help, looking around for the very large equipment that needed to be moved. As she fell in to assist the not-evil robot genius, she asked, "What more can you tell us about our doubles. Nobody seems to know very much, especially about mine." She didn't really know why she was still picking at this, especially since she was sure she probably wouldn't like any answers she found, but it seemed important to know.

[Avenger Assembled]

Talos directed Wander to work, his corroded metal muscles making painful-sounding grinds as he helped move a great bronze gear into place inside a huge skeleton of machinery. "Your double is a victim of the Syndicate," replied Talos bluntly. "Pulled from a dead world, driven to madness by the ministrations of their psychics, used as a weapon of terror and revenge by the Syndicate. It would...it would only distress you to hear further, child." said the great robot, not sounding at all like his Earth-Prime double now. "You cannot blame yourself for the crimes of another."

[Gizmo]

Listening silently nearby, Midnight stood stock still, and it wasn't until thickening tendrils of inky mist began to rise from the seams of his clothes that it became clear that he was stewing in a seething rage. The feeling roiled like a cold fire in the pit of his stomach, and still he did not move a muscle, brobdingnagian self control holding him in check. Finally, after a long, long moment, he reached deliberately to his belt and carefully withdrew a wrap of some leathery material. Unfurling it, he revealed a number of tools. "When you're done there, sit down," he told Talos as the bronze giant's joints squeaked painfully. "I'm a mechanic. I fix things." The last part seemed to be directed inward, with the weight of a mantra.

[Lone Star]

Blake nodded. So his evil duplicate was wreaking havoc in the good Freedom. He had no idea what kind of horror his evil doppelganger was, but he had to know. "Talos- can you tell me about my evil counterpart? I just want to know. It just seems like if I got my powers from...the source I did, that my evil side must be really awful. Hope we can get back there before they cause any more damage."

[Avenger Assembled]

In another sign that this was _not_ their Talos, the bronze giant sat back on his rusted haunches and let Trevor and Erin build the machine together under his guidance. Evidently he was not so proud that he couldn't let human beings do his work for him. To Kid Cthulu, he said, "I know relatively little of your counterpart," he admitted. "My friend Taurus, the great bull of Heaven, was the magic specialist among us in the old days. He spoke of a great and terrible power corrupting an already-depraved young man, making of him a monster. The Syndicate has him for their own use, but they risk much with his every attack."

[Electra]

Erin really had no idea what they were trying to assemble, so she just did the heavy lifting and put things where they were supposed to go. Thinking back on their recent adventures with dimensional travel did raise a new concern though. "Is there any way for us to know what our doubles on the other side are doing?" she asked Talos. "A few weeks ago we had another dimensional run-in, a different dimension, caused by both sides doing the same thing at once and everything getting messed up because of it. We don't want that to happen now, right? Is this universe too far different from the one where we're from for that to happen?"

[Darksider42]

All this time he was trying to comprehend the existence of a good genocidal robot. It really was something that did stir up that curious part of Rifts mind. How many other versions of this robot could exist that were like this one? Were they all like Earth prime or were there others like him? Those questions left him zoned out until this very moment. "I'll see what I can do about getting things hooked up Talos." Rift finally said after Trevor. He really did not want to think on more about the Anti-Earth versions of themselves. He wanted them back where they were before they do some real damage to the city they knew. But to do that, they needed the machine working, and so the guitarist started his work.

[Avenger Assembled]

"When the device is completed," Talos reassured the students, "you will see all that you need." It was decidedly strange working down there in the roboty dark, though faster when Mark joined in to help make machines that none of them could put a name to. Mark shivered a little as they worked, It was strange to think of the nightmare world overhead, compared to this quiet place of scuttling robots and rusty gears. For her part, Daisy has slipped away from the group a little, sitting by herself with a shell-shocked look on her face.

[Lone Star]

Blake shivered. He was glad he didn't live in this dimension. He was scared of what he would become. The possibility that this was a road that Freedom City could have gone down terrified him. He sat down quietly near the others, and meditated. It always calmed him down, and Blake definitely needed to relax. The sooner they got back, the better.

[Avenger Assembled]

Eventually, with the machine half-built, they were able to get a view into their home dimension: a view of their counterparts and the mischief they were working. They wound up looking at Erin's double first, thanks to the unusual knot of emotions surrounding her. As Talos explained, the other Erin was an anchor in the space-time continuum, just like Erin herself. The first thing they saw was the wide-eyed face, the second the bloody hands and all-too-familiar purple pajamas, and finally the broken, moaning bodies propped up all around the girl in what looked like an office park. Some of the bodies weren't moving at all.

[Electra]

Erin swore under her breath as she watched the scene. "She's got my powers, and she's totally crazy," Erin muttered. "If they've been hitting her with the sort of images they tried to get me with, I don't know if she can tell people apart from zombies anymore. That's what they were afraid of with me when I first got to Prime, but she's a million times worse." Wrapping her arms around herself, she struggled for a modicum of objectivity. "She's obviously not on campus anymore. She could be anywhere. Is that machine still going to switch us back if our doubles have spread out or gotten far away?"

[Avenger Assembled]

"You will _not_ appear together," rumbled Talos immediately. "That would cause them to appear in my fortress, and even with their usual in-fighting..." he gave a noise that was almost a laugh at the self-inflicted carnage on the screen. "I would prefer another solution." On a filthy map of the city glued to the wall, Talos indicated "They will appear in the Syndicate base, just as you will appear in the place that you left." He rose to his feet, his metallic face falling in a frown, and joined Trevor and the others at their work. "The work is nearly finished."

Across the room, Mark winced as his double got what he was coming to him. He felt good at seeing a monster defeated, but seeing his own face twisted with mortal agony brought back so many memories...he rubbed his chest sympathetically, remembering his own 'death' and resurrection. He wondered if that other Mark had a father who cared about him. Remembering that face from the night before, somehow he doubted it. Well, I guess we know who won. The good team is about to go home, and the evil team is killing each other off.

Next to him, Daisy had no such reservations: she was screaming in triumph as the other Mark collapsed, and shouting suggestions to the Blank about where he might use that knife again and what trophies he should take for her. Mark decided to busy himself with helping finish the machine, and leave her to the victory she'd seen.

[Gizmo]

Glancing over at the screen, Midnight suppressed an odd sense of satisfaction. From observing Anti-Earth's Daisy and the way he attempted to deal with Erin's double, Trevor had had all the evidence he needed that this 'Hex' was the worst sort of scum. It made sense; Mark was such a pure soul, the inversion was bound to be horrific. That raised some potentially uncomfortable questions about the balance between The Blank and himself, but for the time being, he could live with that.