Magical Upsets: Psyche Clones
Within the territory of the non-elemental Magicks reside many spells that, while seeming to be useful time savers on the surface, inevitably result in chaos, pain, and a general increase in stress. These spells are frequently showcased in comedic TV series or comics and follow a common formula, making a case that such spells may be Multiversal constants in Magic. The one I want to discuss here is what I label the Psyche Clone spell, though it is more commonly known as the creation of magical clones.
What distinguishes Psyche Clones from the larger pool of multiplications is that Psyche Clones are always created for the purpose of being in two places at once and each one represents only one aspect of the base person’s personality, frequently emotions like happiness, anger, and sadness. Of course, some exceptions do occur; in Nintendo Acres, Shadow had two Psyche Clones representing his hero and dark sides split from him and set on a rampage, all because I thought it would an amusing scenario. Anyway, these Psyche Clones, once sent off to do whatever they were set to do (presuming they do so, which is another can of worms entirely), their presence usually causes confusion in others as one passes by someone, enters a door, and then another one suddenly appears at the other end of the hallway. Typically, the person who cloned him- or herself is unaware that the Psyche Clones aren’t perfect examples of the original and may thus cause more mayhem by acting “out of character.” This “Prime” character is only alerted once someone else figures out that the Psyche Clones exist, and then follows a crazy hunt/chase to capture all the Clones and re-fuse them with the Prime.
If the Psyche Clones refuse to do what they’re told, then either the Prime has a streak of laziness that led him to create the Psyche Clones and that laziness pervaded all the clones instead of just one, or only one Psyche Clone was created and it personifies the Prime’s inner evil or nastiness, the classic Evil Clone. In the first case, the transferring lazy streak has the possibility of becoming a long chain behind the Prime’s back, as one lazy Clone clones himself to shove the already once-delegated task, than the second clone makes a third one, and on until the Prime picks up on the situation. This is best seen in a series of old Calvin and Hobbes comics where Calvin set himself on this exact track resulting in five clones.
Getting Psyche Clones to re-fuse with the Prime can be tricky business, doubly so when one of them is the Personified Inner Evil. Typically, gathering all the Clones and the Prime together and casting the counter to the cloning spell can end the situation, but Inner Evils usually make this harder than it needs to be. Another possibility is that the Clones only need to touch or focus to re-fuse. The former is easy to pull off with Inner Evils, since a simple touch on the shoulder can set it off, but the latter may require quick thinking and mind games, like how Shadow convinced his Dark Clone to re-fuse with him in the last comic of the Shadow Saga arc.
Never have I seen a Psyche Clone scenario enacted twice in the same Universe by the same group of people, so at least it tends to happen to people who remember their mistakes and learn from them.