The Sin Hunter: Double or Nothing

Bring Your Clone to Work day

Sirens screamed down the hallway while combat boots stormed through the airstrip, weapons loaded and armor shining in the deep blue light fixtures above. Soldiers stormed to and from the strip, marching to their positions while Morpheus guided three small, ironclad beings around the airstrip, turning to face a Chromite Exosuit that marched toward him. "Lord Morpheus, sir! The Onslaught has begun hacking away at our walls! What should we do?" As the Lord of Sloth, nearly equal in height with the powerful battle suit, raised his arm to reply, something caught his attention.

"I-oh goodness!" The Lord of Sloth dove across the airstrip, catching one of the armored cephalopods who had been rolling around with a missile in its hands, squealing in joy. Morpheus gently lifted the tiny thing by its boost pack, removing the missile from its hands and replacing the missile with a little whale-shaped stuffed animal. Rocking the toddler in his arms, the Exosuit walked forward, holding the other two armored octopi. "Ah. I assume it's Bring Your Kid to Work Day already, sir?" Morpheus laughed a deep, bubbly laugh, taking the children from the Exosuit in his arms.

"No, of course not, General. However, E-104 was experiencing some technical difficulties last evening and couldn't take care of them. I decided it was time these little clones saw what their predecessor had been working on." Morpheus kept his eyes rested with a warm glow on the sleeping children in his arms while the Chromite Exosuit hissed steam from its electrical shoulder plates. "I understand, sir. I've four kids of my own. They can be a handful." The Lord of Sloth stepped past the gate into the open air, feeling the wind from generators beyond the glass dome that shielded Sloth from crushing currents and waves.

"It goes a bit further beyond that, General Chagall. You see," Morpheus demonstrated, keeping the children in his arm while extending a deep black gauntlet into the air beyond his robes, "these are not simply my children. I could find no female species strong enough to handle the force of my reproductive system. As such, I opted instead to reproduce with technology. My life force was strong enough and amazingly," he paused, turning to face General Chagall with a drool-coated armful of sleeping toddlers, "technology withstood my power.

"With such a groundbreaking discovery, I cloned three perfect copies of myself, these beautiful little octopi here," he gestured, his tentacled beard curling into a warm, watery smile when he saw his three children, "and I have never once decided that anything less would suffice." General Chagall's Exosuit helmet nodded in response, powerful cyclone gauntlets with gears and tubes clicking as they crossed over one another. "You never cease to amaze me, sir. Even in your old age, you're as sharp as those before you."

Morpheus nodded, setting his children down in a seat beside the control panel in the loading bay. The Lord of Sloth stepped forward, reflecting upon his new style of armor in the mirror of a passing Phytocycle. Where his previous and day-to-day suit of armor was a glistening, gleaming platinum with glowing blue and white power lines tracing through the veins of his suit, this new suit removed the silver, opting for a near entirely black shell and angled hooks on the gauntlets and boots. Morpheus had also enlarged his cloak to a point where it covered his entire helmet and draped on the floor behind him.

"Sloth has become a safe haven for all those who can find hope in these walls. But there are those who wish to tear them down. We cannot allow that." Morpheus spun on his heel, storming toward a workbench where his clones were enjoying wrestling around the stuffed whale toy. The Lord of Sloth inserted the edge of his index fingertip into the table, displaying a holographic image of Sloth's geographic layout on the board. Morpheus struck the table with his steel black fingertips, his breathing apparatus exhaling steam beneath his gills.

"We need to apply further reconnaissance to the East and Northern walls. I doubt anyone would be foolish enough to attack or try to enter from the West or South edges." Chagall moved toward the table, his powerful turbo gauntlets crossed over his chest plate while he inspected the map. "Makes sense to me. We have roughly three thousand troops seeking work along the wall and even patrolling the streets in Pride surrounding the gate. What should we do with them?" Morpheus slid a hand beneath his beard, twirling a suction-cupped tentacle around his finger.

"The interesting predicament we have is our isolation. Realistically, this is more a siege than a war," the Lord of Sloth reasoned, gesturing to the barriers surrounding Sloth's shining futuristic society, "so the key, then, is to position our troops where they will best support the walls, not stand in front of them as cannon fodder." General Chagall nodded, motioning his hand to point toward their reinforcements section of the hologram. "And where shall we deploy our battle suits?" "We will keep the battle suits in the city, where they can do more good for the people than for those trying to claw inward."

General Chagall nodded, saluting the strategy. "That should work. What we strive to avoid, Lord, is the prospect of keeping our heaviest artillery where it would be most susceptible to destruction early on." Morpheus nodded, his deep black pirate captain's hat flapping in the breeze while he removed his index finger from the table. The hologram shivered, froze, then disappeared from the display casing when the Tyrant of Technology stepped away, gauntlets crossed firm and square behind his back. "Of course. This is why we have turrets that fire custom prepared explosive cartridges at anything within a three mile range."

"No matter how old you get, sir, you never cease to amaze myself and your troops. I only hope I can live to see the day you truly achieve everything you want with your life." Morpheus nodded, his eyes drifting across the shimmering city beneath the waves, zoning out of conversation while keeping the conversation going. "Yes, I should hope so too. You're a brilliant General, Chagall, and I should hope you will live a long and satisfying life. Now if you please, I believe you have a fortification to attend to." The Chromite Exosuit raised a wired arm to salute with bolter fingers."

"Lord Morpheus, sir!" With clanking footsteps that shook the ground, General Chagall had exited the airfield, leaving the Lord of Sloth with his children at the strip. While the sounds of squealing and laughing filled the air around the control table, Morpheus kept his pearl black gauntlets crossed and his steel silver brows pressed down over his eyes in a deep, rumbling irritation. "This city is bringing itself to a test of strength, when it should be preparing for a test of courage. Sloth is, regrettably, not a city like Wrath, composed of brutes and gym rats. We are feeble, humble scientists and bioengineers."

Morpheus turned and extended his arms to gently wrap over the now peacefully dozing clones, all cradled around the whale stuffed toy, their arms grasping it for control. However, as soon as Morpheus scooped the children into his own care, their arms drifted away from the toy, returning and twisting to reach for their own kin in trust and love. "But we will do what we must to survive. For the sake of the people who cannot protect themselves, no matter how cruel my siblings and I may be. They are our people to torture, no one else's."