I am a magical creature known as a doppelganger. If you are wondering about my name, I've had plenty over the years, too many to remember. I never knew my real name or birth name, so for the sake of simplicity call me Adam. As you know we doppelgangers are know to transform from time to time. You probably didn't know we have other cool abilities as well. Including first our trademark bread & butter copy transformation, next we have lesser known augmentation, & finally our most important but greatest kept secret ability of assimilation which helps us assimilate different lifeforms down to their bodily structure, intelect, language, personality, & abilities. It really is quite miraculous to be able to switch from one creature to the next while sustaining no damage or instability physically or mentally.  Well let's just chalk it up to one of the universe's great mysteries I guess.

Anyway as good as all that sounds everyone knows dopplegangers aren't all that powerful compared to some mythical op races such as dragons, phoenixes, demi-gods, gods & goddesses, titans, chaos abmonations, spirits & other ridiculously powerful races or else we'd be wandering shapeshifting immortal gods doing or being whatever we wanted. Sadly that is not how it works. No, in fact we have quite a few headaches of our own to deal with that some may or may not call weakness. The one that is the most common & also most frustrating is the transformation cool down we have to deal with every time we switch forms, where we are stuck in the new form until the cool dowm resets. Another is perfomance, as we stuck as the exact form we take on down to the last strand of hair. No more, no less, we are no stronger or no weaker than the form. No smarter & no dumber than the form locked with no growth or improvement to the copied version. Ain't that rich! So see we're not that different from everyone else we have to struggle to survive & get stronger. Except when you are weak you train, study, create, improve & grow strong. While when we are weak we just wait till you get strong & copy you. See the same. The same goal & the same strength just less work on our part. It's how we gain power though not without limit. We only copy those within a certain distance & range of our ability. So no outrageous newborn dopple coping a demi-god instant power-leveling to the top & becoming unstoppable. No sadly we dopples have things called stages of development which limit our ability to copy. Copying someone or thing above & beyond that limit is sucidal as we will literally use up & consume ourselves down to our very essense trying to finish duplicating them, so not advised as long as your still sane & want to continue to exist. But I guess everything has it's ups & downs. While we don't have connections to homes, families, & friends of our own, at least we get to have interesting lives view them from your eyes & others. Hehe!

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.