Silence reigned as the battlefield ground to a standstill. That wasn't to say, however, that things weren't busy.

They were. Potentially more than they had been during the escape. As Măcel waited semi-patiently for their time to run out, the soldiers of the Palatial Remnant prepared to make their last stand.

The backdoor in their rear lines was finally locked down, preventing regular vampires from crossing the river. Ammo was redistributed – what little of it was left, anyway – for the last time. Only the finest surviving crack shots were given bullets, because whether they lived or died today was not going to be a factor in how many rounds they had at the end of it.

Might as well make them worth their while.

Those few wounded who could be healed on short notice were made ambulatory. Those who couldn't at least had their pains eased. It was the best Dr. Helmut could do for them.

And through it all, the arch-vampire was content to watch their preparations. His eyes almost glowed with excitement as the sharpshooters fanned out to surround him, each one training their sights squarely on his forehead. The message was clear: there wouldn't be any takers on his offer, generous as he had made it sound… but that didn't seem to actually bother him all that much.

He made no moves to get ready. He just counted down the remaining time.

"You put a lot of faith in those toys of yours for people with two minutes left to live," he antagonized with a sadistic grin. "Last chance to join the winning team, here!"

Nobody paid him any mind. Grace would be fighting him anyways, at his own admission. Nobody knew how much her presence would be able to actually turn the tables against him, but her track record against the normal vamps that had been choking the road earlier spoke for itself.

What Robb was really worried about… was the familiar face right next to him.

"-boiling, boiling away existence. Existence. A mere game of chance. Survival. A cry against the odds. There is no survival of the fittest, merely the fortunate. Fortunate. Fortunate is the one who can boil away the odds laid against them. Coloring within the lines is akin to suicide, instructing others to do so, mass genocide-"

There was no mistaking him, even with the sorry state he had appeared in. That was Henry. Though… being able to comprehend the situation a bit made it obvious that this wasn't the original one he'd talked with just this morning. This was a copy from a few days back. Or perhaps even longer, if his hunch was correct. What was more concerning was the fact that one was somehow taken alive, then broken down into… this.

"-requirements upon requirements, the divider is uncaring. It simply separates those who win from those who lose, and the sieve upon which they are sorted is liable to change. To live is to engineer victory from unknown rules, to lose is to ignore-"

It just kept going on, and on, and on. To say Robb was severely unsettled looking at this twisted version of Henry was the understatement of the century.

The duplicate stared at him, never even pausing to breathe, to blink. The longer it carried on, the more he wondered if this copy even remembered how to do those things. It was giving his goosebumps goosebumps. Why was he looking only at him? He wasn't anything special, right? Just happened to be in the right place at the right time to avoid the worse fates everyone else was still reeling from. Surely he knew that... right?

...

He elected to use every last minute he had to recuperate his magic and stamina. Call it a gut feeling, but in all likelihood he was going to need every last drop of both shortly.

"One minute left!" Măcel boomed. "Don't say I didn't warn you!"

He swept his gaze over the combatants, expectantly. Nobody moved a muscle. Nobody made a sound. It was like the whole world was holding its breath, waiting for the invisible hand of the clock to run out.

"Thirty!"

Not a single one of them moved even a centimeter.

"Fifteen!"

Even the motormouth duplicate began to still. He stopped talking, tensing up in preparation for the brawl to come. He set his feet into a ready stance with practiced fluidity, eyes facing forward and wearing a mask of pure concentration. To him, there was no past, Robb realized. No future, either. Just the moment, and the obstacle that stood in the way.

Him.

"Five! Four! Three!-"

Then, to his complete surprise, the dam burst.

Grace catapulted herself forward before the last second, not willing to give up the tempo of the battle to her enemy. Her fist clenched tightly as she leapt, her arm wound back with the entire weight of her body ready to unleash devastation on Măcel's face. The Remnant soldiers took that as their cue to take their opening shots on the targets they'd lined up in the meantime, and a fusillade of cracks rang out through the night, dispersing the silent air with newfound fury.

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Her fist collided with her target. Bones shattered on impact – whose exactly they were, wasn't quite clear from Robb's position. The arch-vampire, regardless, clearly had felt the impact, as in the aftermath he was looking more than just a little messed up.

"Not bad," he admitted, staggering back and using a free hand to set his jaw back into place. Several bullets made their mark on him as he retreated momentarily, though those hits proved much less effective and only caused shallow wounds that healed quickly.

"Still, so eager to get up close and personal? I'd have thought you thought better of yourself, kid. What happened to all that holier-than-thou crap about not being a killer?"

"I never said I wasn't," Grace countered. "But you of all people have no right to dictate to me who I am. So now that I've closed the distance…"

Her voice changed registers.

"I'm done with losses and draws."

Măcel laughed. "Now you're starting to get it."

Their slugging match renewed with earnest, and before long it reached a point where the movements were almost literally blurring together. More bullets rang through the air, taking opportunistic shots at both Măcel and the copy, causing the latter to finally enter the fray. Robb found himself thrust into the melee himself as Henry finally got close enough to take an opportunistic swing.

Immediately, every other detail surrounding him dropped out of focus due to sheer necessity. Robb only just brought his rifle up in time to block the lunge, and he nearly stumbled as the follow-up swing forced him to backpedal. Those were what ended up being the slow strikes. The tempo only got more and more furious from there, and before long he was almost completely on the defensive.

"Loss of information is never accidental," the copy rambled as a particularly impactful strike bit deep into the plastic covering the rifle barrel. "It is deliberate, premeditated, and permitted only for those outside the natural order. To be enacted against those on the outside. On those arrogant enough to declare a beginning and end to perfection."

"Mate, I have no idea what you're going on about, but snap out of it already!"

Robb cast out shadows around him, summoning a pair of inky dark mannequins around him to mask his own movements. It was almost second nature to him at this point, and he'd hoped it would buy him at least a little breathing room. Unfortunately, the clone didn't bother to even look in their general direction.

His eyes remained perfectly locked onto Robb's own, even through the veil of darkness he was using to cover his face.

The two of them circled warily for a moment, studying each other with renewed interest. For the clone, it was something closer to bored curiosity than his own need to survive. Like the duplicate had resigned himself to simply face whatever was placed in front of him, regardless of who or what did the placing. Or the obstacle itself, for that matter.

He hadn't even flinched at hearing Robb's voice. Just continued to stare at him with that same heavy, burnt-out expression.

Not good. Whatever happened to him, he's completely gone-

There wasn't time to finish that thought. The sound of metal scraping against ceramic reaching his ears alerted him to the danger long before his eyes caught up.

In the blink of an eye, he was being pressured again. One of Henry's knives slid underneath his guard towards his ribs, the only thing saving him from dying right there being a nearly ruined plate of body armor he'd been given to face the vampires with. The blade skittered along the surface of the vest, tearing a slight gouge in the rigging as Henry's wrist pushed the knife below his armpit.

-Holy shit!!

Robb clamped his arm down hard on the overextended limb, wrestling for his life against the other blade inching closer and closer to his throat.

His magic faded away, completely unable to maintain concentration on the technique and not being really helped by it to begin with. Henry's cold, emotionless stare bore down onto him just as hard as the free arm pressing the blade against his skin, a thin trickle of blood already beginning to form where the edge made contact.

Robb realized that the man he was losing against currently was likely more of a monster than any wolf or vamp he'd seen or heard of in his time after the Witching Hours.

"Wh-" he choked, gasping between strained breaths and grunts of effort. "Why? Why are you doing this?!"

The clone cocked his head to the side slightly, as if considering him for the first time as more than just a target. Barely a reaction, but a reaction nonetheless.

To Robb's surprise, he answered.

"I have been shown what must be done," he spoke, perhaps more clearly than anything else said so far. "I have seen it, and while I have discovered much about myself in the process, I fall short regardless. Someone must succeed where I will fail, someone far stronger than me. If not-"

A shot rang out across the battlefield, and Henry's head jerked to the side with a spray of red mist. Robb yelped in surprise as the force behind the knife went limp, and his shocked recoil let the body drop free to the ground. The sound of his shield breaking rang in his ears as he watched the clone slump against the ruined pavement, lifeless.

He was shaking. Without thinking, his trembling hand reached up to smear the flecks of viscera that had splattered onto his face away.

That… that didn't come from any of the soldiers, he realized. Who…?

"Well, ain't that a bloody surprise."

Robb's head whipped towards the newcomer's voice, stepping out into the moonlight from his concealed position. Broad-shouldered, unafraid and carrying a pistol in each hand, a man in an old police officer's uniform walked up to the body of the clone, looking a little more happy about the development than someone playing the hero should be.

"Wasn't expectin' ta get a consolation prize, comin' out here and all. That kid really knows me too well, doesn't he? Guess I'll have to thank him for the tip, once this mess is all cleaned up."

His accent implied him as a Scotsman, the ease at which he'd dispatched Henry implied danger. Robb wasn't quite sure, or in the right state of mind to be a solid judge of character, but it seemed like this person was joining on their side of the fight, which… hopefully boded well for them all.

If it didn't, they were probably all screwed anyways.

"Now, let's take a look at the goods," the officer said, kicking the lifeless body over onto its back. His spectacles glinted bright white as he scrutinized the fresh kill, tinted ever so slightly green by the sickly glow of the crystal embedded into the clone's chest.

As Grace continued to brawl with Măcel in the background, all he did was crouch low and stare into the listless, doll-like eyes of the corpse.

"U-um…" Robb started.

"Shhh." the man held up a finger to silence him. "Watch closely, he's about to try something sneaky…"

...The hell was this guy talking about? Did he seriously expect there was any way to survive such a-

The crystal's light flashed from green to orange, and the glassy, doll-like eyes of Henry's body locked straight onto the newcomer. He managed to move maybe a few centimeters before the towering man grabbed him by the neck and slammed Henry into the ground.

"Oh no, y' don't!"

The ground shook slightly, causing Robb to fall backwards onto the ground in shock. Henry – if whatever was left even still was him, at this point – coughed up a mouthful of blood on the first slam, then received two more and a toss across the street for his trouble.

"Not sure how ye managed to find yet another way ta cheat death like that," he remarked, "But this time, it's not gonnae be enough."

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