Sveta had made a deal with the devil. It wasn't the first one and it wouldn't be the last, but that didn't mean she had to like it. She was doing it for Haven; with so much to deal with, the last thing she wanted was for a detective to be all up in her business, and the easiest way to prevent that... was to make said cop her business. She had been feeding him some information here and there about criminal activities in Haven's neighborhood. Trying to walk the tightrope between keeping him at arm's length, and appeasing his weird sense of justice. Only occasionally did they have to meet in person - tonight was one of those times.

Sveta set in the abandoned diner, waiting for the detective to show. The place had gone out of business and had been closed down for months, but ownership was still contested, and no one really came around to take care of it. It was boarded up, but Sveta happened to know someone who had a key to the back door. It seemed like as good a place as any to meet off the radar.

Sveta was sitting at the bar, danging her legs from a stool, wearing boots, jeans, black gloves, and a grey sweater over a tank top. She didn't need to give the detective the satisfaction of showing up in full vigilante gear. This was just going to be a friendly talk. A song and dance, for the deal they had.

"Sorry, coffee machine is busted" she said when she heard footsteps from the back "But I got one to go if you're inte..."

The sentence fell short when she turned around. The man standing there was definitely not the detective.

Sveta swore in Russian and slid off the bar stool as the man - leather jacket and brass knuckles and all - lunged at her. For lack of a better idea, she threw the mug of coffee in his face. He hissed... blinked, and kept going. Sveta backed away between tables and booths... and turned just enough to come face to face with a second attacker.

He looked just like the first one.

"Oh you gotta be kidding..."

There were new runaways hiding at Haven for Sam to use as cover for a meeting with his friendly neighborhood vigilante. This meant that to quietly get information from Svetlana, Sam had to meet her in one of the unwatched corners of New York City.

The arrangement between Sam and Svetlana had proven fruitful. A few arrests had come from it, a few targets for Sam to try the latest iteration of his anti-mutation spell. It was certainly a win for him both personally and professionally.

The need to remain covert led Sam to being less well dressed than normal. Not the worst, but were he to need to stop somewhere after he would loathe being underdressed. However, when needs must he supposed.

That particular night was different than the usual affair. When Sam arrived at the diner, Svetlana was not alone. What’s more, her company looked to be a family of multiple identical brothers. Oh, and they were attacking her.

Sam hurried into the diner, drawing his pistol, and yelled, ”Funs over! On the ground!”

Duplicators were the worst. Hands down. Not only did they never run out, they also had a power that was especially bad to boost. And boosting was hard to avoid when they got all up in Sveta's face in a hand to hand brawl.

Sveta tried to dodge and run for it, but one of them grabbed her by the hair and yanked her back. She kicked out, and felt a crunch - but when she twisted free, the man was still on his feet. What the hell. Another hit landed on her shoulder and she turned, counting more people than there had been before. So, she kept fighting.

>>”Funs over! On the ground!”

"You're late!" Sveta snapped from where she was sitting on a booth table, having landed on her ass moments before, and kicking out at one of the men. She'd landed several hits, some on one's head, and yet they refused to go down. They also did not care much for the detective pulling a gun, although some of them decided to turn their attention to him instead.

Of course the hoodlums didn’t follow Sam’s command. That would be too easy.

”Hands over your heads. I will shoot.” Sam added the line about shooting when a few of the many identical men turned to face Sam. ”Last chance. I’m with the NYPD. Hand’s up!.”

The men didn’t care. A few went for Sam the rest moved for Svetlana. Sam silently cursed and gave one last command to stop before he fired.

Nothing. Well, almost nothing. The bullet hit, there was a hole cut in the man’s shirt but he kept walking. He put on a pained expression… and so did his twins. Some weird mutant tomfoolery was at play. More so than just a bunch of duplicates.

Sam knocked a table over in front of himself to buy time while he changed magazines in his pistol. He needed to neutralize the power that was at play. Sam trusted Sveltana could handle herself for a few moments.

Well, at least Detective Travis was useful as a distraction. Some of the identical goons turned towards him. Sveta kicked out again then rolled off the table, taking up a steadier fighting position. A shot rang out, and yet no one went down. Either Travis was a terrible shot, or... these guys were bulletproof. Dammit.

"Looks like they don't respect the badge much!" Svetlana noted, trying to fight her way over to the counter for some cover. "Hey! Idiots! Which one of you is the original?"

Obviously, they didn't answer. Sveta picked up a dusty coffee mug and threw it at one of them.

Sam heard Svetlana’s comment as he worked the slide on his sidearm. The normal cartridge went sailing off into the diner as one with an ensorcelled bullet was chambered.

”I seem to get that a lot lately.” Sam said as he tucked his sidearm in on his side under his ribs—a classic police close quarters combative pose—and fired.

The bullet struck center-mass on one of the men and nothing happened. Sam turned at his waist and fired on another of the men. Again nothing. Were they not mutants? Sam was confused just long enough to let the first of the men get in grabbing range. The man’s hands grabbing Sam’s shirt and pulling him in brought him back to the there and then.

”Hey, this is a new shirt!” Sam complained as he dug his knee into the man’s groin. The strike seemingly doing less than it should. ”And you’re wearing a cup?” Sam struck up and hit the man in the jaw with the heel of his hand. Other than the man’s head snapping back he seemed otherwise unphased.

”I think you need new friends.” Sam called to Sveltana as he drew his knife and sliced it up the man hitting pants and shirt.

Immediately the man began flailing and in his confusion let Sam free. Sam climbed up and over some chairs to make distance as the one man flailed further before his clothing wrenched him back into a perfect pose for having all his limbs cuffed together. The other men who had moved toward Sam held back a moment in shock.

More shots rang out and yet nothing happened. Well, the cop was useless. Go figure. Svetlana doled out more punches and kicks, but they did precious little - although at the sound of the shots, the goons seemed to somehow all jerk at once. Weird. The situation was not looking good; Sveta was already tasting blood in her mouth from a punch. Travis stopped shooting too, and... pulled a knife instead?

Sveta looked over from the bar just in time to see the weird jerking movements as... the man seemed constrained by his own clothes, somehow.

"Did you do that?" she blinked, and got shoved into the bar for that moment of distraction. The man grabbed for her neck and she struggled; blue light swam into her vision. There was some kind of a... glowing thing...

The knife’s magic had worked, that was good. If Sam was careful he could hopefully restrain all the men. Restrain first, ask questions later. It was a good policy when one didn’t want to end up dead to a not-mutant and his family of identical thugs.

”Yeah.” Sam replied. He knew Sveltana was sniffing around his ability to restrain powers, but he needed to stop the men before they killed one or both of them. Sam also could confess to restraining people and hopefully throw her off the trail. Not ideal but best he could hope for.

Sam kicked one of the men. Blessedly he was pushed back by the force. It looked like injuries didn’t seem to stick or were muted at least. Physics, though, was still king. The man pushed back, Sam sliced another man and then threw his knife at the man restraining Svetlana.

The man Sam had sliced gave a repeat performance of the first man. However, Sam was not some fancy knife throwing army ranger or anything. Instead of sticking in the man’s back and controlling all the clothes above his waist, the knife clipped his pants on the way past.

Okay, so Travis had something that was working against them. Whatever it was... Sveta's vision was not really focused on what was going on in the other part of the brawl. She was too busy trying to keep this one guy from strangling her. She kicked out again, and this time, the man lost his balance, stumbling back and falling... as if his legs wee suddenly tied together. What? Sveta coughed, spitting some blood, looking around. The blue glow was still visible under the man's sleeve.

"I think... this might be magic." she noted. A chair came sailing through the air and Sveta ducked for cover. Some goons were still up. "Whatever you're doing, keep doing it!"

Sam picked up a chair and used it to hold back one of the men like he was a lion tamer. When in a fight like a bar fight, falling back on the Bas Rutten system wasn’t a bad move. ‘make some distance and grab a chair.’ The man wrote the book on how to win a bar fight.

Svetlana called out that she thought it was magic. That wasn’t news to Sam. Knowing the men weren’t mutants made the list of options short. It was magic or the most advanced robots he’d ever seen.

Sam swung the chair and bowled a man over before calling back to Svetlana. ”The knife. Hit their clothes with the knife!”

Maybe it was tech. Sveta really wanted it to be tech. She still disliked dealing with magic, even after having met Hercules and his... master.

>>”The knife. Hit their clothes with the knife!”

Well, crap.

Sveta looked around for where the knife had gone. It was under one of the tables. Sadly, she'd have to go through one of the goons to get to it. Hits wouldn't take them down... but maybe sheer momentum would. Sveta was lighter than the men, but she did have some training.

Knife it is.

Getting up from where she'd ducked, Sveta moved towards the table with the knife. A goon moved to intercept her; she dodged and jumped, managing to get on one of the booth tables. From there, she kicked out again, with minimal results. And then she lunged. Knee first, into the man's chest; she didn't hear a crack, but her weight did bring both of them down. Sveta landed on top and rolled off before the man could grab for her, scrambling under the table and grabbing the knife. It... didn't look like anything special.

Something yanked on her sweater. She turned on instinct, stabbing the knife into the man's arm.

Well, she did hit the clothes... kinda. The jacked suddenly came to life, pulling the man's arms together and locking them in as he struggled. The knife was still in his arm, but...

"Um... too much?"

Between the pair of them, Sam and Svetlana were slowly restraining all the assailants. Svetlana had left the knife in the jacket of the man she’d restrained the arms of.

Sam used the chair to keep the men beyond arm’s reach as made his way toward Svetlana. ”It’ll hold ‘em for a few minutes. Not sure how many more times it’ll work though.” Sam said before recovering the knife from the most recently restrained man.

”These friends of yours?” Sam asked, the chair discarded and the knife held at a high ready. By that point the men had realized that it was an actual threat to them.

How many more times... Sveta frowned. The knife was useful to a point, but if the goons started getting back up, they were screwed. At least Travis made his way to her. She could always use him as a human shield.

>>”These friends of yours?”

"If I had to guess I'd say they are courtesy of the mob guys I beat up the other night..." she sighed, kneeling by the latest guy and pulling back his sleeve. The bracelet around his wrist had a faint blue glow. He either had the latest fitness app, or... Sveta twisted the bracelet and snapped it off. And then, suddenly, the man didn't look the same anymore. The other did not like that at all.

"Yup. Magic. F***."

”They’re the mob’s fruit basket. Got it.” Sam swiped the knife toward one of the men and he jumped back from the blade.

Svetlana used the breathing room to remove what turned out to be the most recently restrained man’s mystical fitbit. Once she did he changed to another man. Sam’s eyes indeed when he saw it. His brain working to piece together what might have been going on. Possible illusion magic, he’d seen it before. What made more sense though was some kind of somation. Somation was something Sam understood, especially enchanted objects that used it.

The bracelet might be making them identical by making them look identical through a couple different means, but the damage reduction. Sam had a suspicion that damage was being divided. The anger at the first man having his bracelet removed seemed to confirm that suspicion

Sam needed one of those bracelets. Only way he was getting one was to deal with the other duplicates.

”Goodie... Well, at least we know how it works.” Sam said. ”Steal all the fitbits.”

Steal all the fitbits.
Easier said than done.

Travis did not seem too freaked out by the magic that was somehow making goons look the same, and also shake off bullet wounds. Sveta did not like it one bit, but they's have time for discussion once they were done with the fight. Since Travis had the knife, she busied herself with making her way to the guy already down, and taking off the bracelets before their clothes loosened up.

"There's... still gotta be an original copy, ri...?" she ventured, just before one goon tackled her form behind. Sveta hit the floor and struggled under the weight, swearing, and trying to kick him off. "Knife!"