In most situations DupliciTy had faced as a superhero, his ability to clone himself and split his consciousness across the copies was his greatest asset. Few opponents were capable of dealing with what was basically an army of highly-trained superheroes guided by a single consciousness, acting with complete unity and coordination. Unfortunately, his power did not deliver immediate results: It took intense concentration (and several seconds) for him to make a copy, and he had to split his attention across each clone to coordinate their actions.

This all meant that when his buddy Starling arranged a secret briefing with him in an abandoned warehouse, he was at an immediate disadvantage when his friend suddenly attacked him. As Starling held him in a choke-hold and he felt a weird stinging sensation in his arm, DupliciTy struggled to maintain his concentration enough to summon his reinforcements. Despite his panic and a spreading paralysis that radiated out from his arm, DupliciTy felt a sense of triumph as one of his clones appeared and immediately wrenched Starling off his back.

As his first clone engaged Starling, DupliciTy was able to focus more and more of his attention on creating reinforcements and soon Starling was the one who was struggling against the increasing crowd of clones. Even though DupliciTy had lost all use of his right arm, his mind remained unaffected and was able to coordinate his clones' attack while continuing to add more and more to the fray.

Soon, Starling was completely surrounded by DupliciTy's clones and raised his hands in surrender. DupliciTy angrily yelled, "What's going on? Why did you attack me? What did you hope to accomplish?" Starling relaxed his stance, smiled menacingly and responded, "Well, I had hoped that I could take care of you myself. That would have been simple and easy. But I knew that if I didn't get the job done, we would have to handle your entire army. If you shoot at the King, you best not miss and all that!"

DupliciTy pushed carefully through his ring of clones toward Starling, and responded, "Wait, if you thought you might lose to my army, why did you attack me? And who is 'we'?" Starling continued smiling, and then began to laugh. "Remember back when we fought Mechiblox's mind-controlling robots? Well, you probably don't remember it well, but I sure do. You were supposed to have my back, but we barely won that one."

DupliciTy was unnerved that even though Starling was surrounded, his body language was calm and confident. "What are you talking about?" he asked incredulously. "You know I can't remember any of what happened when I was under their control, but you and the Vigilante destroyed the main command node and disabled all the robots and everything turned out fine. Are you mad about that? What the hell...we've all been knocked out of the fight occasionally. Do you think I wasn't trying my best or something?"

Starling shook his head and continued in a eerily calm and conversational tone. "No, man. We know you gave it your best shot. I was there: I saw what happened." Starling's casual tone and confusing actions continued to mystify DupliciTy. "Then what is this all about? I still don't understand any of this!"

Starling made a conciliatory gesture and said, "Well, let me continue then. All will be revealed! The Vigilante and I talked about it afterward and then pulled surveillance footage of the fight, and the interesting thing we realized was not that you were mind-controlled, but HOW you were mind-controlled."

DupliciTy was confused, and said, "What, it's interesting that I was mind-controlled by a mind-controlling robot? It also happened to Owlson and a bunch of cops. That's literally what those robots were designed to do, Starling. I still don't get it."

Starling nodded sympathetically, telling DupliciTy, "Don't get upset. You're right, of course. Lots of people fell under control of those robots. But I was deployed next to you--the real you, not a clone--and what struck me was that when you suddenly attacked me then, you hadn't been in contact with any of the robots. In fact, when we studied the footage, we were surprised to see that of the 58 clones you had created for that fight, only one had been touched by a robot's mind control cables. You had 59 separate bodies, DupliciTy, but they were all sharing one mind."

DupliciTy's face showed confusion as he contemplated the implications of Starling's revelation. "Okay, I don't really remember anything about that, but let's say you're right, Starling. What good does that little piece of intel do you when my army has you beat. By my last count it's 27-to-one, even if I'm still a little worse for wear. You're one man against an army, and from where I'm standing, you've already lost the fight!" DupliciTy said confidently.

"Ah, you might have brought an army, but the lesson of we learned from Mechiblox's robots is that we don't need to defeat an army," Starling said smugly. "We only need to get a little lucky and convert just one soldier to my way of thinking. Once we do that, you all will fall in line like good... little... soldiers," Starling said, said, as he pointed to clones one at a time for emphasis. "And if there's one thing we've learned, it's that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity!"

"Wait," DupliciTy said anxiously, "You keep saying 'we.' Who..." DupliciTy trailed off as he suddenly started to hear scrabbling noises from the crates surrounding them. As their lids slid to the ground, hundreds of glowing blue creatures began launching themselves toward him and his clones. Chaos erupted, but DupliciTy quickly and efficiently formed an outside-facing defensive line to fight off the parasites flowing from the crates. As the tentacles' paralyzing stingers stunned one clone after another, the remaining clones would rip the creatures off of them and push the incapacitated clones to the rear. About a dozen of his clones who had been stung had been pulled from the line and were lying incapacitated on the floor behind them, but DupliciTy continued conjuring replacements and successfully shored up the defensive line. In fact, in a brief lull in the parasites' attack, DupliciTy dispatched several clones to grab the discarded wooden crate lids and was able to further bolster his lines against the parasite's stingers.

DupliciTy's continued success marshaling his forces to repel the parasitic onslaught gave him hope that--despite being ambushed twice today--he would continue to be able to add to his forces and regain the initiative. But then DupliciTy was stunned as all his thoughts dissolved as a flash of white energy blasted into his mind. As he slumped to the floor in shock, he saw the defensive line of clones cease their movements and stand limply. A wave of parasites immediately swarmed over the barricades and slithered onto the clones, who didn't react at all to the incursion. As he stared blankly forward, he perceived Starling beaming as he moved his hands away from the back of one of his felled clones.

"You were doing great, man!" Starling congratulated him as he grabbed the hand of the smiling clone and helped him to his feet. "Your army was really impressive, and it was clever to use the crate lids as protection against the masters' stingers! And you really did a great job pulling in the reinforcements and maintaining the discipline of defensive line the entire time... well, until a moment ago! Good thing I had kept a spare master hidden away to share!"

DupliciTy struggled valiantly to wrest back mental control of his clones from the parasites, but felt like he was swimming against the current of a mighty river. The power of the first master had completely disrupted his thinking and his ability to control the clones, and as more and more of clones fell, they began actively placing parasites onto the spines of their stunned comrades. His fragile hold on his own thoughts continued to slip as white flashes of pleasure bombarded his mind every time one of the clones was claimed by a master.

In seemingly no time at all, DupliciTy was the lone remaining human in the room without a parasite on his spine. Then, in a dramatic reversal, he found he was no longer in control of his body as the parasites commandeered their mental link and puppeted him to his feet. His face was blank and impassive as clones lovingly draped parasites all over him. As they squirmed over his rigid body, he was surprised to find that his linkage with the clones was not only immobilizing his body, it had washed away all of his anxiety about what came next. As his own master finally took control, the pleasure this produced seemed to resonate back and forth with that of his clones over their common link until he was almost overwhelmed with joy.

As DupliciTy's eyes flashed bright blue and his face broke out in an ecstatic grin, Starling gave him a bear hug and jovially asked, "See, I told you your clones would come in handy! You just didn't realize your army would come in handy for us as we enslaved you. Doesn't it feel great to let someone else take the lead so you can just enjoy being one of your master's little toy soldiers?"

As DupliciTy thought about it, he happily concluded he had no choice but to agree.