Aden woke up to see both his girlfriend and his mother and father’s killer tied to tables next to his.

“What the… where-.”

He turned his head to stare at a row of heroes from the look of them.

If that wasn’t odd enough, the fact that all of them were staring face forward and with blank stares on them made it creepy as hell.

He tested the restraints on his hand and feet, finding them to be… actually very soft and easy to break.

Whoever put me here probably thought I was only human…

Aden decided to keep up the charade as he waited for whoever put them on these tables to return.

It didn’t take long before he met the person, and it was pretty shocking to say the least.

Ms. Magicka and Captain Asta both walked in with a girl who was half their size.

It… was odd, as the little woman looked almost exactly like his sister when she was younger.

She couldn’t have been more than twelve.

“To think, I would meet my siblings in this way, such a disgrace.”

Aden shifted himself to make it seem like he was just waking up.

“Oh my, rise and shine half-brother! So good of you to join us.”

Aden, still keeping up with his ruse, tossed and turned.

“What’s happening, where am I?!”

The little girl giggled back at him, “oh big brother, you’re so silly. This place is home!”

Aden turned to stare at her, confusion marring his face.

“Home? The hell are you talking about? And brother? I only got a sister, little girl.”

The girl’s eye twitched for a moment as she moved closer to Aden.

Her eyes were a kaleidoscope of colors, shifting and changing as she moved to stare at him.

“Home, big brother, is where you grew up, where you were born, and where you make your first memories. And yes, I know it may seem odd at this time, but no, you do not have just one sister.”

She snapped her fingers, and the two strongest heroes in New Terra moved to the sides of the door. Aden made out that they too had blank stares on their faces.

“So, you are controlling them somehow.”

The little girl only smiled, “oh quite astute Aden. Yes… these heroes all work for me… always will.”

The girl walked around the room, checking the restraints for Aura and Crysa as she did.

“It all began after my… Father put me here in the Hero’s League, well more like pushed me in this direction. I was in the middle of trying to find help for two of my best friends… little did I know that the Hero’s League had other plans for me.”

A green energy glowed out of the girl’s hand, “I used to have the power that this one now has, the ability to augment my body using energy from another. I was strong, powerful.”

She turned to Aden with an angry stare, “naïve. I believed the heroes would help me. Instead, they used me and treated me like a guinea pig. I never had a chance, against the greed of humans.”

Aden shook his head in confusion, “wait a minute here. That was what-”

The girl cut him off with a look, “what Crysa said? Yes… that was the memory I gave her. The memory of my entrapment, the memory of my betrayal! But… Crysa is more than that.”

The little girl turned to stare at the heroes, “Magicka, darling. The Recall spell please.”

“Of course, mistress.”

The magical heroine made a few hand motions that made a hologram appear.

“Ms. Magicka’s abilities do not follow the standard of most superpowers, and it was that ability that allowed me to transcend my captors, and enslave them.”

The girl put a hand over her mouth, slamming it into her other fist as if she just realized something.

“I never did introduce myself did I?”

She turned to stare at Aden, “big brother. I am Crystal Bockman, the last daughter of Margaret and Bryan Bockman. The daughter that was controlled by Dr. Tiberius Poxus into killing her own father and forgetting her own family!”

The girl picked up a chair and tossed it at Captain Asta, who never flinched as the chair smashed against his body.

“God Damn I wish he would at least FEEL that pain, but the control only goes so deep. Still, it's not important right now.”

Crystal turned to stare at Aden once more, and Aden turned his eyes to not stare directly at them.

He could feel that there was something trying to pull his head towards them, and he had the will to turn away.

“Oh big brother, are you worried about ending up like them? There’s nothing to worry about there. I have no reason to, and it doesn’t work on us siblings.”

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She motioned a hand towards the hologram in the center of the room.

“Spells upon spells, tests after tests, they did a number on me big brother, and the skin I wear now was not the skin I had coming in.”

Crystal moved towards Crysa, “I had to escape the pain somehow, the crushing emotions that kepts me from moving forward.”

She smacked Crysa across the face, who did not react at all.

“Clones are so useful.”

She turned to Aura, and despite his need for information, Aden almost ripped himself out of the bonds then and there.

“The youngest of Tiberius Poxus’ experimental children. The most naïve, the most gullible.”

Crystal held a hand over the girl’s face.

“Don’t!”

Crystal stopped, an eyebrow arching over at him.

“So, you fancy here then? I wonder why?”

“We both lost people, and she’s cute.”

Crystal looked at him incredulously.

“That’s all it takes? Just a common ground and hormones? Nothing more?”

Aden shook his head, “sometimes, that’s enough for something to start. It came out of nowhere for me too.”

Crystal snarled, “no! No relationship is that fast! No courtship is that quick! You cannot know if she really loves you!”

Aden turned to look at her, “then you just haven’t found the right person.”

Crystal screamed as she smashed the floor, a crack appearing where she hit the tiles.

“You and Sarah, I can’t understand. Maybe it was something these fools did to me, but you and Sarah’s naivety piss me off.”

Aden looked at the floor, “we never knew you existed… I guess that’s what you did to us?”

Crystal froze in mid stride as she was making her way towards him.

“How did you know that?”

Aden lifted his head, “it’s obvious from your explanation. Only thing I don’t understand is why you did that?”

Crystal looked pained, turning away, “because you don’t need to remember what they did to us.”

“Why would that matter? Why did we forget you?”

“...activate the spell, Ms. Magicka.”

Aden turned to stare back at the hologram, watching it as it played out a scene.

It was a girl… who looked like Sarah. Strapped to a desk with tubes coming in and out of her orifices.

Every couple of moments, she would be shocked, and Aden could see her screaming despite the silent nature of the memory.

And next to Sarah were two other tables, just like hers.

Just like the ones they were now in.

The same treatment was happening to them, tubes and hoses stabbed into their flesh, electro shocks and torture devices of unknown origin constantly enveloping them in pain.

Aden saw a little boy on one of those tables that looked just like him.

“Are you telling me that this is us? You, me and Sarah?”

Despite the bravado that she had shown earlier, Crystal seemed to retreat into herself as she spoke.

“Yes… and that wasn’t all.”

She finally rose up to stare at Aden, only her eyes were no longer a myriad design of colors.

Instead, she had the same red eyes Sarah and he now possessed.

“We died, big brother. The real us, at least.”

Aden felt his mind shut down.

“What?!”

Even as the question left his lips, he felt the surety of those words stab into his mind.

Crystal had tears in her eyes.

“We were the first generation of clones, successfully made from the DNA of our mother and Dr. Poxus. Sarah, Crystal, and yes… even you, brother, were dissected by the Hero’s League to understand the nature of the alien DNA that was bonded to our bodies. DNA that our father Bryan and our mother Margaret, had in themselves as native Teras’emon.

This whole endeavor, was called the Huma Project, and it’s goal was to create a human alien hybrid from the samples of the Teras’emon, They were the original inhabitants of Asta.

When they succeeded, they decided to shelf the idea due to the genetic potential in the hybrids. You’ve no doubt seen what Aura, Crysa and the other’s were capable of. That potential in every human, would only complicate things for those who run this planet. So the Hero’s League, after confirming the details of the experiment, killed the test subjects.”

Crystal twisted her wrist, and one of the heroes lining the room fell to the floor in a heap, his neck snapped.

Crystal smiled, “I suppose their fear was justified. Even after they killed us, we came back.”

Aden stared at the ground, “the Crimson R that Sarah talked about...”

Crystal squealed in delight, “brother was always so smart! Yes Aden, the Crimson R, and the R Series, were the remains of our original bodies! Taken by the Death Child Monica, the first of Poxus’ own experiments on the Teras’emon DNA samples. She gave us our bodies back, and using her power, made new memories for us.

She had done me first… and I had requested that you and Sarah have your memories… adjusted. I alone would remember who our true enemy was, and you two could go and live out your lives… at least, that was how it was supposed to be.”

Crystal’s arm stretched outward as she wrapped around the body of the dead hero, and started to engulf his body with a blue slime.

Soon it was broken down and digested, his bones the only reminder that he was ever there.

“I needed that. The prick was one of those teenage heroes, Bellet or something. Touched my ass as I was walking by.”

Aden was still coming to terms with what he was watching.

“This doesn’t make any sense, why did you have us believe that Pox was responsible for our parents' deaths? Why give me cancer… wait, was that even cancer?!”

Crystal smiled in rapt joy, “oh Aden, cancer would never do anything to beings like us, who control our bodies completely. It was only when Sarah destroyed the ‘cancer’ cells that the limiter placed on you was removed. I bet she thought she made you super or something right?”

Aden could only nod, but a rage was slowly burning in him.

“You played with my thoughts, you and Monica, why?!”

Crystal smiled sadly.

“Because we were afraid you would try to stop us.”

Aden kept his cool, but wanted to snap out of the bands around him…

Wait.

She would know then… that he…

A devious grin spread across Crystal’s face as she flicked her wrists, destroying the bands around his hands and feet.

“A regular detective you are, brother. I knew, yes.”

Aden closed his eyes, “you still haven’t answered me, Crystal. If I was really…that, and you could have told me and Sarah, why didn’t you? Why did you leave us out of this?!”

Crystal shifted her body as she turned into a blue blob-like figure.

“I think I will tell you brother… but only if you defeat me first!”

Aden felt his body shift, and soon his human form, which he had believed to be his real body, answered his call to morph.

Aden shifted into a massive black blob, a sharp edge appearing in his tendrils.

Fine, I’ll beat the truth out of you!

…