007. I Fought Myself and All I Got Was Existential Dread
The sketch blinked again.
Not in the cute, animated way. Not even in the haunted painting way. No. This was different. The lines shifted. The smile widened—subtly at first, then too wide. The shading darkened around the eyes, giving it that "I listen to villain monologues for fun" look. A pencil stroke curled where my hair should've been flat.
And then it smirked.
I blinked back. Reflex. Regret.
> ⚠️ UI ALERT: Protagonist Detected in Duplicate
Narrative Anchor Splitting Imminent.
Please stay emotionally consistent.
The UI jittered on-screen like a squirrel in a microwave. I slapped it away.
Behind me, Ezra muttered, "That's not supposed to happen unless you've been rebooted or cursed."
"Great. I've been neither. Yet."
Hana gasped softly, the delighted kind. "He's evolving…"
I turned. "He's a drawing."
"He was a drawing," she corrected, pointing to the floor.
One of the shadows wasn't doing its job.
It twitched. Stretched. Peeled up like old wallpaper, detaching from the wall in slow, jerky shudders.
It didn't slither or crawl—no, that would've made sense. It stood. Straight up. In one movement. Like someone learning how to exist in three dimensions for the first time and giving it a solid B-minus.
The shape was human.
Familiar.
Too familiar.
A silhouette with my frame. My posture. My signature brand of exhausted malice. But where I was built for regret and mild violence, this thing radiated main character energy™ in the worst possible way.
The UI helpfully pinged again:
> 🧍 LEO.EXE_BETA Detected
Classification: Archetype – Tragic Antihero (Fanservice Variant)
Stability: 9% and declining
Warning: May attempt a dramatic redemption arc without consent
Ezra, without even blinking, pulled out a backup blaster and said, "Shoot it now or suffer a monologue."
I raised a hand. "Wait. What if it's peaceful?"
Beta-Leo raised a hand too—mirroring me.
And then it spoke.
"Pain… is the gasoline of justice."
I turned to Ezra. "Shoot it twice."
He was already aiming. The blaster hummed. Fired.
The bolt struck the clone's chest—and fizzled. Not with sparks. With sparkles.
Literal glitter burst from the impact zone, followed by a faint, tragic piano chord.
Ezra stared at his weapon like it had betrayed him.
The thing stepped forward. Same height. Same walk. Same exhausted spine curve. But where I looked like a man whose last good day involved a sandwich and silence, this version looked ready for a slow-motion betrayal montage.
Long coat, of course. Perfectly wind-blown despite the total lack of wind. Cheekbones set to "emotional damage." Scars glowing faintly like cursed eyeliner. Tragic glint in the eyes. Not my eyes—these were photoshopped.
A cinematic spotlight from nowhere followed his every move.
> 🧍 LEO.EXE_BETA // Archetype: Tragic Antihero (Fanservice Edition)
Status: Unstable but Extremely Marketable
Projected Role: Unwanted Plot Mirror / Fandom Trap
The UI hiccupped again and tried to reload sarcasm settings.
Clone-Me stopped. Looked at me like he was trying to access my browser history.
"You think I'm broken," he said softly, "but I'm what the world needs. A reminder. That pain can have purpose."
Hana's eyes sparkled. "He gets it."
"I'm gonna throw myself in a bin," I said.
Ezra fired again. The clone caught the blast midair, spun it around his hand like an edgy magician, and gently lobbed it into a vending machine. The vending machine exploded. Dramatically. A single Justice Snackz bar flew out of the flames and landed at the clone's feet.
He picked it up. Held it like a relic. Whispered, "Even sweetness has bitterness inside."
"Oh my god," I muttered. "He's full CW."
Then—he moved.
He came at me with my posture but none of my shame. Every movement was too clean, too choreographed, like someone had animated a fight scene with extra budget and zero restraint.
He mimicked me.
Perfectly.
Except where I punch, he poses. Where I dodge, he spins unnecessarily. His finger guns literally shoot quotes—little UI pop-ups blasting from the tips.
> "You don't need saving. You need someone who understands."
I ducked. The quote slammed into the wall behind me and left behind an emoji burn mark. It was a heart.
"Stop that!" I shouted. "No one should weaponize emotional validation!"
The clone tilted his head. His smile twitched.
Then he said it.
> "Back then… at the moment of impact… you hesitated."
I froze.
He took a step forward, slow. Calculated.
"You wonder if it was an accident," he said. "Or if part of you wanted to hit them."
I didn't move. Didn't breathe.
That wasn't public.
That wasn't real.
It was a thought. A sick, private flicker I'd buried under a decade of denial and garbage routes.
Ezra's voice cut in, cold and flat: "Okay. We're nuking it."
He raised his arm. Charged the blaster. Fired a burst straight through the vending machine wreckage.
Beta-Me leapt—graceful, dramatic, arms wide—and vanished in a flurry of glitchy pixels.
When the static cleared, he was already on the other side of the room.
Beta-Me held Hana's sketchbook like it was a sacred relic. And smiling.
And then he opened it.
Pages flipped with no wind. No hands. Just raw narrative thirst. The air crackled. The lights flickered like they were considering unionizing. Ezra muttered something about genre collapse.
Hana gasped, hands outstretched. "Wait—don't—he'll—"
Too late.
The sketchbook pulsed.
One page shimmered, then projected into midair: a Leo in a cape made of tire tread and symbolic guilt. Another—Leo with an anime sword and a six-pack that I most definitely did not authorize. Then a third—Leo cradling a small kitten like a war-torn veteran discovering softness.
Beta-Leo grinned.
> ⚠️ UI ALERT:
MULTIPLE LEO CANON THREATS LOADING…
Stability: 4%
Fanfic Infection Level: Extremely Terminal
"I contain multitudes," he said.
"No, you contain copyright violations," I snapped, and grabbed the nearest vending machine.
With the strength of sheer existential regret, I hurled it at him.
He caught it.
Caught it.
Spun in a perfect circle and balanced it overhead like the world's most dramatic Pilates instructor. His glowing eyes locked on mine.
"I fight with purpose."
He threw it back.
I dove.
The vending machine exploded into flaming protein bars and emotional trauma.
"You're a bootleg at best!" I shouted, grabbing a coffee mug labeled #1 Hench-Dad and hurling it at his stupidly perfect cheekbones.
It hit.
He smiled anyway. "Every knock… just sharpens the tragedy."
"Oh my god," Ezra said. "He's weaponized melodrama."
The sketchbook flared again. Glowing silhouettes shimmered across the wall—more Leos. So many Leos. Each more cursed than the last.
"Is that one holding—" Ezra squinted. "—a sword made of unresolved childhood issues?"
"I never drew that!" Hana squeaked.
The clone raised his hand again, finger-gun glowing.
> "You don't need saving. You need someone who understands."
I flung myself behind a half-dead control panel.
"Hana!" I yelled. "Deactivate the book!"
"I'm trying!" she shouted. "It's… it's growing chapters!"
The UI flashed red:
> FANON BREACH CRITICAL
INCOMING: Leo.EXE_BETA_SUBVARIANTS
SUGGESTED RESPONSE: Cry or Electrocute
Ezra ripped open a maintenance panel. Sparks flew.
"I'm flooding the room with junk data," he muttered. "Hope your clones can't handle bad writing."
He pulled the breaker.
A low hum filled the room. The sketchbook shuddered. Beta-Leo twitched—his coat glitching into a hoodie, then a crop top, then back to tragic trenchcoat. His face distorted—cycling through five expressions of brooding, one of hope, and a quick blink of "rom-com smirk" before settling back to haunted.
I didn't wait.
I grabbed a jagged data shard from the ground—labelled "Narrative Debris: Use With Regret"—and slammed it into his chest.
He staggered. Eyes wide. "You… faced yourself."
Then exploded.
In a blast of glitter, lens flare, and violin music.
---
Silence.
A glitched containment tag thunked to the ground. Still flickering. Still warm.
> PROTOTYPE 03 // Escaped Containment Sector B-7
Narrative Contagion Risk: Uncontained
---
Ezra picked it up like it might swear at him. Hana hugged the sketchbook like it needed therapy. I slumped against a broken console.
"I hate everything," I muttered.
A protein bar rolled by. It said "Fuel Your Redemption" on the wrapper.
I kicked it into a wall.
---
Back in the lounge, everything buzzed like it needed therapy.
The lights flickered between "gas station bathroom" and "ghost documentary interview." The coffee machine was still sulking in the corner after being kicked earlier. Ezra had propped open the busted terminal and was elbow-deep in wires. Hana sat cross-legged on the floor, gently patting her sketchbook like it had just survived a traumatic breakup.
I was slouched across two villain recliners, one leg dangling, one eye twitching.
"I just fought the Tumblr version of myself," I said.
Hana, without looking up: "Yeah, and you lost in charisma points."
"I had flavor. He had a soundtrack and fanservice angles."
"Exactly."
Ezra's fingers flew over the monitor's crusty keyboard. "Containment tag's not encrypted. Which means either they wanted someone to find it… or they didn't think anyone would survive the encounter."
He turned the screen. Red files blinked across the interface.
> PROJECT // REFLECTOR SERIES – PROTOTYPE 03
SOURCE DATA: ARCHETYPE TEMPLATES + NARRATIVE FRAGMENTS
INPUT STREAMS: PUBLIC FANWORKS, AI-GENERATED CONTENT, COGNITIVE ECHOES
My spine curled in on itself.
"Cognitive echoes?" I asked.
"Subconscious stuff," Ezra muttered. "Thoughts you've had but didn't say. Feelings you didn't process. Narrative bleed from emotional high points."
"So the clone knew things I hadn't even told myself yet."
Hana blinked. "Wow. That's, like… sad. But also kind of cool."
"It's not cool," I snapped. "It means my own brain is snitching on me."
Ezra kept reading. "Looks like D.A.R.D.'s using archetype weaponization. Turning people—well, templates—into controlled narrative vectors."
"In English."
"They're breeding fanfiction soldiers."
"Oh my god," I muttered. "I'm not just haunted—I'm market-tested."
Hana raised a hand, a little sheepish. "Okay but… I might be partially responsible."
Ezra and I turned.
She held up the sketchbook. "So. Apparently, when I draw fan versions of you—and emotionally invest in them—it opens narrative breach points. Especially in unstable zones."
"You're saying your fanart caused a clone invasion," I said flatly.
"Accidentally!"
Ezra snorted. "That makes you a vector."
"A what?"
"A living breach tool. Your thoughts leak into the narrative. That sketchbook is basically a cursed projector."
Hana looked delighted. "Cool."
I pointed at her. "No more tragic versions of me. I see one more glowing eye, I'm setting that book on fire."
Hana whispered to the book, "Don't listen to him. You're beautiful and terrifying."
The terminal beeped again.
Ezra stared at the screen. His expression didn't change—but the air felt heavier.
"There's more," he said.
> PROTOTYPES 01 – 06: Escaped Containment.
SIGHTINGS REPORTED IN MULTIPLE SECTORS.
HIGH-RISK UNITS: Unstable Leo, Idealized Leo, Redemption Path Leo, …Leo.exe/Null
I groaned. "There's more of me."
"There's a network of you," Ezra replied. "And the next facility might know where they're going."
He tapped a final command.
> FILE LOCATION: D.A.R.D. Containment Sector B-7 // Narrative Stability Division
I rubbed my face with both hands. "I need a vacation. Or a lobotomy."
Hana grinned. "Or we could break in."
---
Absolutely. Let's rewrite Scene 5: Planning the Break-In as a direct, seamless continuation from Scene 4, picking up right after Leo's line:
> "I need a vacation. Or a lobotomy."
Hana: "Or we could break in."
Hana grinned like someone who thought "felony" was just a spicy kind of teamwork. She dropped her sketchbook onto the nearest flat-ish surface—a half-melted console—and flipped to a new page.
"I already started planning," she said. "Obviously."
Ezra and I exchanged a look. It said: We are not ready for this.
She turned the sketchbook around.
A full-color, glitter pen–enhanced heist lineup stared back at us.
Hana – Demolitions / Emotional Instigator
Ezra – Tech / Brooding Side-Eye Generator
Leo – Plot-Armored Protagonist™ (Reluctant)
I stared at the drawing of me: trench coat, gritted teeth, sunglasses. Holding what appeared to be a grappling hook made of trauma.
"Why do I have abs?" I asked.
Hana didn't look up. "Manifesting."
Ezra crossed his arms. "We'd have to get into Containment Sector B-7. That's not a lab—it's a blacksite buried under the arcology. No maps. No public records. Just rumors and the occasional traumatized intern who quits the genre."
"What do they do there?" I asked warily.
Ezra pulled up the tag again. The broken screen crackled. A folder blinked at the bottom:
> TRK-KN // Source Data: Experimental Deployment
Status: Rogue Designation Pending
I didn't breathe.
"That's… me?" I asked.
Ezra nodded. "Not just you. It's your template. Whatever they were testing, it started there. A weaponized archetype. A delivery system for reincarnation events. You were one of the first test cases."
My chest tightened. The air felt suddenly too warm, like the vents were pumping regret.
"And now I'm… what, defective?"
Ezra shook his head. "You're uncontained."
I laughed, bitter and tired. "Great. So I'm legacy software with emotional bugs."
Hana looked up from sketching a tiny bomb labeled Plot Device #2. "That means they'll come after you, right?"
"Eventually," Ezra said. "Or worse—they'll use your data to build more."
I slumped into the nearest broken chair. It creaked like it wanted to give up but couldn't afford to.
"I wanted a vacation arc," I muttered. "Some beach filler. Maybe a hot springs episode where no one talks about trauma."
Hana flipped to a new sketch: Leo in a floral shirt, sunglasses, drink in hand, surrounded by seagulls holding knives.
"It's possible," she said, smiling. "After the heist arc."
Ezra stepped forward. "We hit B-7. Stealth entry. We pull every file with your name, designation, or death count. And if we're lucky, we find what else they're building."
I stared at the glowing word on the screen—
> TRK-KN
—and sighed like it was my new superpower.
"Fine," I said. "Let's go rob the people who turned my mental breakdown into fan merch."
---
END OF CHAPTER 7