With his blade imbedded in his foe’s shoulder, he slashes up and out, intending to cut the arm.
“I get that a lot!”
He said as she slashed again.
“Everyone pegs me as sick or insane, which I can’t really blame them for. But then they’re surprised when I know what I’m doing!”
Starchaser landed in front of her mirror self, ready to finish her off. But then she felt a notable bit of pity. She remembered when she thought like that. When status and fear where all that mattered. The thrill of battle. The rush of excitement after every kill. And how much it stung when none one would so much as approach her after the cease fire. She transformed into robot mode, and looked down at her mirror double.
“But then again… Maybe that’s exactly what you need right now.”
She said, expanding an open hand to her.
Broadwing’s blade passes right through mirror-Topside’s shoulder- it phases through his armor like he wasn’t there.
“Oh, Pit!” the real Topside groans.
“You would not sacrifice another world to save your own,” the mirror captain says in a strange calm. “That is admirable. There are many out in the universe who commit atrocities in pursuit of noble ends, believing those ends justify the means. Even those who seek power with the best of intentions can become corrupted by their ambition.”
Pipebomb’s axe phases right through his duplicate’s body.
“Beneath your… unorthodox exterior lies a cunning mind,” he says in a strange calm. “Put that mind to use for good, Pipebomb. It wouldn’t hurt to reign in some of your more ‘explosive’ impulses.”
Mirror-Starchaser takes her counterpart’s hand and rises to her feet. Through her broken mask, she smiles.
“You have grown,” she says with uncharacteristic wisdom. “Before, you fought only for glory, but now you’ve found a far greater treasure. You are now a warrior with alliances forged in the heat of battle and a noble cause, a more worthwhile reason to fight.”
Garand, Zepar and Epsilon all give confused looks, “Well, of course.” Zepar said, “if we committed such actions to preserve our future, we’d be worse than our version of Bludgeon.”
Why are they suddenly calming down like this? Epsilon was thinking, trying not to freak out.
“What trickery is this!”
Broadwing said in surprise.
“Uh. Thanks? I’ll be sure to remember that.”
Pipebomb said. More confused than anything.
“Oh! Uh, thanks.”
Starchaser stammered. Flustered and surprised by the unexpected praise.
“You know, I know where you are right now. I know how great it feels being on top and all but, well, like you said, there’s something greater out there. And I’m sure you could find what I have. Oh! I got it. Do you know if there’s anyone on your ship named Fortress?”
“What the-?”
Starchaser said in surprise.
“First a sword… And now a friend. This station sure loves messing with me.”
“I wouldn’t think that.”
Broadwing replied as he walked over to her.
“This seemed to be another test. Facing off against twisted versions of ourselves, as a means of teaching a lesson. Though my double was absent. The implications of which trouble me.”
“I guess.”
Starchaser replied, still sounding a little down.
“Still, it would have been nice if they stuck around.”
“Welp. This is officially the weirdest day I’ve ever had.”
Pipebomb said.
“Coming from you, that scares me.”
Starchaser replied.
Topside looks down at his abdomen. Unfortunately, the smoldering hole in his armor was quite real, as was the pain it brought him.
“Well, that’s one way to make the lesson stick,” he grunts, wincing. Don’t be the kind of tailpipe who shoots his own self in the gut- consider the message received, Lemuria."
“Shut up. You’re fine.”
Starchaser said with a laugh, giving her firend a playful shove.
Broadwing stepped forward.
“We were confronted by a team of mirror doubles. Twisted versiouns of ourselves that I believe were supposed to represent the darkest parts of our being made manifest. And by confronting them, we learn something about ourselves.”
“For example, I’ve discovered the true power of friendship!”
Starchaser said boastfully. Though her bravado deflated as soon as she finished saying that.
“Wow that sounds really stupid when you say it out loud.”
She muttered to herslef.
With this latest phase of the trials complete, the illusion dissolves. The shadowy figures disappear and their whispers fall silent. The hall brightens, and the wall Gatecrasher had been blasting at reveals itself as the holograms around our heroes fade away. The hallway’s decor was now more in line with the usual architectural motifs the Knights of Cybertron favored, and a wide round platform rises out of the floor at its end.
The members of the Salvation fought valiantly in King-Quan’s… well… not eyes but rather optics, due to him being a mechanical, sentient being. The Holy Warrior paced toward the platform that awaited him and behind him, surprisingly, the Wrecker followed. He didn’t say a word and stepped on the platform after King-Quan did.
The platform was made out of a dull red metal, with simple trimmings of pink and purple wrapping around its edges. It was quite distinguishable from the greys, bronze, and gold that dominated the rest of the corridor. In the platform’s center was a cluster of pink diamonds: the crest of Alpha Trion.
“I’m starting to pick up a theme here,” Topside says, looking down at the sigil beneath his feat.
Once all of our heroes had stepped onto the platform, a porthole opens in the ceiling above them, and the dais rises out off of the floor completely, levitating upward through the hatch.
The platform rises steadily up through another porthole and into a circular chamber with a high domed ceiling. A small hole at the top allowed a shaft of what only looked like natural light to fall upon the many ring-shaped terraces that made up the floor, each one smaller than the last, tapering downward to form a shallow bowl. Our heroes had been deposited onto the largest, topmost terrace- the rim of the bowl. Square and rectangular metal plates overlapped one another to form the floor, and between them ran lines of red and yellow light. Ornate columns adorned the perimeter of the room: red and purple data towers with clusters of black cables that sunk into the floor around their bases. Flashes of blue light pulsed inside them, forming strange patterns and glyphs. Inert consoles sat in front of the towers, some with stacks of datapads on top of them.
Topside shrugs.
“I guess,” he says. “I just hope these trials don’y all involve holograms of our worst nightmares trying to kill us.”
