“So, uh, are you sure this is safe?” Clover asked nervously from her spot in the middle of the room we had dedicated to try transforming her back to human appearance.

  “We’re zapping you with a field meant to make the molecules that make up ‘you’ easier to separate while Rias uses devil magic to teleport the two halves of you apart and rearrange the pieces into your original form. That is practically the definition of unsafe.” Carl replied absently, only to get a smack on the shoulder from his sister. “Uh, that is…what I meant is that, yeah, one hundred percent safe…”

  “Really convincing there, doofus.” Gloria sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose.

  “It’s really not as bad as he makes it sound.” I tried reassuring my original Pawn trio, who all looked increasingly more nervous about what we are about to do. “You’re just going to feel a little tingle and then we’ll activate the spell. That’s it.”

  “Why do you know that?” Alex asked me, to which I gave a careless shrug.

  “Tried it out myself before we called you guys over.”

  After all, there was no way I was just going to blindly test out a superscience machine and a random spell on one of my Pawns without making sure it was at least somewhat safe. Once we confirmed Carl’s device wouldn’t accidentally disintegrate whatever we pointed it at, we worked our way up to the point we used myself as a test dummy just to make sure we weren’t sticking Clover in some kind of discount agonizer.

  If anything I might have Carl keep the machine around after this as a full-body massager, because aside from one unfortunate side effect I felt amazing coming out of that thing.

  The fact that we had done some testing – and that Amy was waiting nearby in case Clover did get hurt from this – calmed the girls down enough that there was nothing to do but flip the switch and hope things worked the way we designed them to.

  Before anyone could change their minds, I gave Carl the thumbs up and he activated the machine.

  A high pitched humming sound filled the room and a few indicators on a nearby screen he set up lit up green before a purple light shot out to envelop Clover. The current catgirl gave a surprised yowl and started pressing on her teeth.

  “I thought you said it would be a little tingle! It feels like I have wires in my mouth!”

  “Uhhhh, it really wasn’t that bad for me though.” I said and looked to Carl for an explanation.

  “I’m not seeing anything different from when you tested it.” He denied. “It could be she’s just more sensitive to the field than you were? Do we keep going or shut it down?”

  I chewed on my lip but ultimately left it up for Clover to decide.

  “If you don’t see anything wrong, just do it!” She exclaimed. “Cause there’s no way I’m doing this again if it feels like this everytime!”

  After one more check with Carl we decided to just go for it. The spell circle activated. There was a flash,a puff of smoke, and when that cleared – a perfectly normal looking Clover stumbled out, coughing a little. “Ugh, that was the worst. I never want to do that again.” She grumbled.

  “Hey, it worked!” Alex cheered.

  Sam was a bit less excited, “It did! But, uh, was that supposed to happen?”

  “Uh oh.” Gloria added.

  I looked at them and then followed their gaze back towards the center of the room.

  More of the smoke had cleared revealing…another Clover?

  This one had been crouched down so I hadn't immediately seen her and was methodically rubbing at the side of her head with the back of her hand.

  What?

  The spell was designed to separate Clover and the cat she merged with so why were there two Clovers instead?

  ‘Looks like your spell didn’t work exactly as expected.’ Ddraig commented as if that wasn’t obvious.

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  Before I could say anything back though, the second Clover noticed she was the center of attention and apparently did not appreciate that fact.

  Leaning forward on all fours, she bared her teeth and hissed in a distinctly catlike manner.

  Someone took a hesitant step forward and I made the mistake of quickly raising my arm to warn them back.

  The sudden movement was enough to startle the lookalike and she took off like a shot, scrambling over practically every surface in the room in an effort to escape or hide.

  A few of my Peerage rushed in to try and catch the copy, which quickly turned into a very destructive game of tag since none of us wanted to accidentally hurt her and which we failed every time we thought we had her cornered.

  That wasn’t a big deal. In fact it was perfectly fine. Besides Carl’s machine, there was nothing in the room that anyone cared about so as long as no one got hurt and we kept clone-Clover in one room—

  As if drawn by my thoughts, the door to the room opened up as Dinah hesitantly poked her head in holding a cellphone. “Hey, uh, Rias? You got a call from– eeik!”

  Clover’s double immediately spotted the new path to freedom and rushed right by the preteen, practically jumping over her with catlike grace and startling a shrike out of the younger girl.

  Not good! If the double got out of the house, who knew where she could end up!

  “Stop her, don’t let her get away!” I yelled to my Peerage, something mostly unnecessary as practically everyone was already sprinting after the runaway blonde.

  -o-

  If I thought the chase around the one room had been chaotic, that was nothing compared to what the entire house descended into as we tried to catch Clover’s double but also make sure that she didn’t end up escaping out a door or window by accident.

  Furniture was upended all over the place, shelves were knocked empty as people ended up using walls as improvised platforms to suddenly change direction or maneuver, and there were clothes scattered in nearly every room after the double ended up colliding into a laundry basket and getting tangled in the contents.

  No doubt we were going to be finding random things in odd places for weeks after this. And as for what happened in the kitchen…

  Probably best if I didn’t think about that right now. Alex’s egg and flour coated form next to me was already a painful enough reminder.

  The important thing was that we managed to corner Clover’s double again.

  She hissed as Alex, Sam, and I crept forward and I raised my arms in what I hoped was a nonthreatening gesture considering the state the three of us were in. I’d already mentioned Alex was already a mess from the disaster in the kitchen. Sam was covered in scratch marks from another time we almost caught the double, but the rest of us hadn’t been close enough to pin her down and she’d escaped again. I, on the other hand, looked half-drowned thanks to when I’d cornered the double in one of the bathrooms.

  Obviously I didn’t capture her there either, but this time I was confident of our chances.

  Not only were Sam and Alex here to help me but Clover and Gloria were in the room, a bit further back, blocking off more of the exits so the double couldn’t dash off again.

  Now we just had to catch–

  The double exploded into motion again as something set her off.

  Sam was the closest and made a lunge for the double, knocking her off balance long enough for Alex and I to both tackle her and try pinning her in place. Something much easier said than done with all the wiggling, clawing, and the fact she was yowling like we were murdering her. But with the addition of Clover and Gloria moving to help us we managed.

  And then because things weren’t chaotic enough, Crystal and her cousin burst through the door in full hero mode ready to blast anything that moved.

  “Rias, what’s going on? I heard the fight start over the phone!” Crystal demanded.

  “Well you see…” I sheepishly started before a set of very sharp teeth clamped down on my hand. Hard. and the double started wiggling to escape.

  Not again!

  I jumped to my feet ready to give chase one more time, only to freeze when the double hadn’t actually run out of the room.

  Instead she was curled up in the arms of a very confused looking Vicky, purring up a storm.

  “So, uh…” Crystal looked between the double and her cousin and the rest of us still mostly heaped in one big pile on the floor. “...I’d still like to know what’s going on. Why are there two Clovers?”

  -o-

  Instead of trying to explain everything all at once, we decided to relocate to one of the…slightly more intact…sitting rooms so we could at least be comfortable while we explained our screwup.

  Crystal and Vicky already knew what we had been hoping to accomplish, so all we really needed to explain was what happened today. Which turned out to be an oversight by me and Amy when we created the spell.

  Simply put when we imagined what the process should look like, we only clearly designated what Clover should look like afterwards. Both because we only knew what she looked like before the merge thanks to the Bakuda bomb, and because we just assumed it wouldn’t matter for the cat portions.

  Instead the spell had latched on to the only clearly defined image of what teleporting the two of them apart would look like so instead of catgirl Clover, we got two Clovers – one of which just so happened to have an animal’s mind.

  “So what now? Do you try recombining them somehow? Because I don’t think this is a sustainable long term solution.” Vicky asked from her spot on the couch, where the Clover double had decided to curl up almost in her lap.

  “No way.” I immediately denied. “We only separated them as quickly as we did because we weren’t sure how healthy it was for Clover to be transformed like that.”

  “Now that we aren’t rushing, we should be able to come up with a way to transform her back into a cat.” Amy said, giving her sister a weird look as the blonde started idly stroking the double’s hair. “Magically changing a human into a cat should be much simpler than molecularly separating the two and then teleporting each half into a viable coherent individual.”

  “Is Lily a human though?” Alex asked. “Clover’s a devil now, so wouldn’t Lily be one too?”

  “Lily?” Gloria asked.

  “Well we can’t keep calling her Clover-2!”

  “It didn’t seem to work like that.” Amy answered, ignoring the little by-play. “I don’t know if it’s something the spell did or if it’s just impossible to create devils like that. I’m not sure I want to know either. I don’t want someone thinking we can create a supernatural army.”

  “Yeah, I couldn’t see that sitting well with the PRT even ignoring all the other reasons they have to not like you.” Crystal said. “Though speaking of the PRT, how would you like to crash the victory party they are throwing this Thursday?”

  I blinked at the sudden invitation.

  “Why?”

  Crystal frowned. “The PRT is making the whole situation out so that they and the National Guard basically handled everything with only minor assistance from the other independent heroes. I get that they can’t advertise that they needed the Villains to take down Lung again, but this time they’re even writing out Amy’s contribution in the hospitals because she’s part of your group now. The thing is, too many people saw her so the PRT still has her listed as a member of New Wave. So she’s on the invite and can bring a plus one.

  That sounded like a recipe for instant disaster, but at the same time I was really tempted to do it anyway because it would be hilarious.

  “You should do it,” Carl commented. “Rub the fact that we can get some recognition for everything in the Empire’s face, even if it's indirect.”

  “Why’s it on a Thursday though?” Gloria asked.

  Crystal and Vicky shared a look before the former leaned forward and said in a hushed tone, “You didn’t hear it from us, but the PRT is in a rush to get Lung and Bakuda out of the city before Oni Lee can organize another potential breakout. A Birdcage transport is supposed to go out that day and they’re using the party as a smokescreen.”

  Oh right, unless something butterflied it away that was the same transport that—

  A metaphorical bolt of lightning struck my mind as I remembered who else was supposed to be on that transport.

  I was going to have to do something about that wasn’t I?