Substitute and Double Team

Subsitute and Double Team are relatively uncommon moves that create copies or clones of the user. They are standard moves, and as they aren't attack moves or status-causing moves they are rarely changed by an Eeveelution into a signature move. However, compared to most other non-damaging moves, Substitute and Double team are very effective tools in any conflict.

Double Team
The more basic of the two moves is Double Team, which creates a copy of the user. This copy looks exactly the same as the user, including any items, weapons, armor, or injuries that the user has, but it is made entirely out of a passive form of energy. As a result, while the copy can move and act like the original user, it can't do any damage, nor can it pick up anything. Contact with a living creature other than the original user, or with any other Double Team copies made by the user or by someone else, will destroy the copy.

As a result, Double Team is good for causing confusion or for covering a retreat, but not for much else. Psychics can easily tell apart the copies from the original because the copies can't think for themselves. The original user must tell the copies what to do, and this in turn creates the maximum limit on copies any one user can create, because if they create too many then the copies that they can't order to do something will just stand there.

=== The copies can, however,     transmit anything they see and hear back to the original. This makes them effective scouts. However, due to the need for orders from the original, it is difficult for them to operate very far away from the original user (unless the original is a psychic trained with telepathy) === A Double Team copy requires very little energy to create, but each additional copy requires slightly more energy than the previous one, so creating 50 copies of yourself is rather difficult.

Substitute
With all the drawbacks of Double Team, someone in the distant past decided to refine the move, creating Substitute. There are two levels of Substitution.

The first and most common level is the one everyone knows of. It creates a single clone of the user, who is capable of actually doing damage and can take limited amounts of damage in return. The clones does not have any of the injuries of the user, but does not have any items or weapons either. The original user can put as much of their energy as they want into the clone, anything from 0.001% of their maximum energy up to 50% of their energy. In return, the clone will have that much energy at their disposal to use- anywhere from enough to simply scream at their enemies to having the ability to blast their for with Railgun. This energy not only determines how much damage the clone can cause, but also how much they can take- and clones are also very capable of healing themselves. They are also able to use any weapons they pick up on the battlefield, and they can think for themselves as well- meaning they have an equal reaction time to their original, and a psychic can't easily tell the difference between a clone and the original user. Having the ability to think, they are even fully capable of building elaborate traps on their own, and they can even capably drive or fly any vehicle that the original can. They are also capable of learning on their own. Espeon clones can even teleport!

However, they work best in synch with the original user- like Double Team copies, Substitute clones share everything they see, hear, and think with their original and with all of the original's other clones. This means that one strong Eeveelution can easily take 40% of their maximum energy, split it up into 5% chunks and create eight clones, all of whom can work effectively with each other to stall or even destroy their opponents. Clones are also much less limited than Double Team copies in that they can easily move a few miles away from the original, making them ideal for scouting a large area quickly.

While 50% of the user's energy is seen as the general maximum (why would anyone want to create a temporary clone that is stronger than themselves?) it is possible to put more energy than that into one clone. This is generally only useful when the original user is retreating, as they can then drop a very strong clone into the path of their enemy to stall them and allow the original to escape. Strong clones can also be used as decoys, when a weaker clone would be too obvious.

Level 2 is much harder to accomplish than a Level 1 Substitute. It requires only a small amount more energy, but the user also copies all of their items, weapons, armor, and other things they are carrying (which also includes less needed things like tracking beacons planted by an enemy, or parasites, and also some advanced kinds of poison). It does not copy injuries, although an uninjured or slightly injured user can save a little energy by copying the injuries as well instead of blocking them.

Level 2 is one of the most overpowered moves available because it copies weapons. While the lack of items makes Level 1 clones obvious because they aren't wearing any kind of item-carrying bags or other equipment, Level 2 clones don't have that disadvantage. Copied weapons are more easily destroyed than the original's weapons, but they still deal full damage. Most kinds of weapons, such as daggers, swords, most firearms, and lots of other things, can be copied. Some very complicated weapons can't be copied, such as the explosives used in high-end anti-tank weapons or the guidance systems used in some kinds of surface-to-air missiles. Command computers, laptops, and other similar high-end electronic items can't be copied either, but less complex items such as berries or cell phones can be copied.

The ability to copy a .50-caliber anti-material rifle or a light machinge gun should never be understated.

Combining Double Team and Substitute
So you can have either low-energy copies that are incapable of attacking, or high-energy clones that can do everything you can do. Why not have both?

Using both moves at the same time is difficult at best, due to the amount of energy you are splitting up and giving away. However, the ability to make 30 Double Team copies with 3 or 4 actual Substitute clones mixed in among them is an extremely powerful ability, especially if they are Level 2 clones. This kind of combination move can cause massive confusion among low-level enemies, and it can give the original user a huge advantage over high-level enemies too.

One must be careful when doing this, however, because such a move also attracts a lot of attention. Having enemy reinforcements show up is a bad enough thing, but when your enemies see an Eeveelution with a whole bunch of copies and clones of themselves, you should at least expect the possibility of an airstrike being used to clear the area out......

Signature Versions
While attack moves are usually the ones chosen for modificationinto signature moves, copying and cloning signature moves are also out there. Most modified versions are actually simply an Eeveelution using the move at the highest level of mastery, leading to very low energy requirements and the ability to control many clones and copies at once.

The most common truly modified version of Substitute is a Level 2 version where the clones explode in a burst of energy once they have been taken out. The burst of energy is usually similar in power to a low-skilled Dark Pulse or Discharge attack and only goes out to a very short range, making it only effective against enemies that take down the clones with a physical attack. In some cases where a strong enemy takes down multiple clones at once at close range, the extra damage caused by the energy explosion can be significant. Some Eeveelutions maximise the damage potential of these explosions, while others maximise the amount of knockback force created to throw enemies off-balance and others apply status conditions such as Paralysis instead of damage.