Arisen

16

Pax opens his optics, and is greeted with a face he's really beginning to hate.

"Well well well." Sentinel grins. "I shouldn't be so surprised. Alpha Trion at least knew when to quit."

Pax just stares at him calmly. "I no longer care for anything you have to say to me, Sentinel. Killing you holds no interest to me anymore."

"Spoken like the Circle of Light itself." Sentinel notes.

"I've never meant anything more." Pax insists, not even lying. "I won't raise so much as one digit."

"I believe you." Sentinel says, surprising Pax. "But I'm not the one you're here to kill."

Sentinel nods at someone on the other side of the glass window. "He is."

Pax turns to look as Sentinel adds, "The only one that was ever standing in your way, all this time."

Pax's met with an exact copy of himself, only with his cog still intact.

Pax's optics widen as he looks towards Sentinel, but he's gone.

Looks like he's on his own.

He moves his helm side to side, watching as how all the copy's movements are inverted. He moves right, it moves left, and vice versa.

"What is this?" Pax whispers, not sure he wants to know the answer.

"Well of course you don't." the copy says, startling Pax. "I'm you. The side of you hiding beneath your spark."

Then the copy dashes towards the glass, crashing right through it, as well as the glass chamber, and through the wall.

"I'm not fighting." Pax vows, only to be rewarded with the copy shoving him to what's left of the ground, yelling,

"Oh yes you are!" the copy yells, wrapping his servos around Pax's intake and squeezing.

"This isn't real." Pax protests weakly through gasps.

"You know it is." The copy sneers. "It's all anyone has and will ever see." then swings a fist Pax only barely manages to avoid, causing the floor to blow to bits, taking the cube with it.

In the real world, the guards have gotten past one of the doors, only the one to the simulation chamber remaining.

Bee barely reaches Pax as that door is blasted as well, trying to block the glass chamber with his frame.

The copy lands a kick right to Pax's abdomen, blasting away more of the simulated building before yanking him back up, sneering in his audial.

"You left Bulkhead and Dion for dead. You killed Alpha Trion with your own servos. You're a monster."

"I said enough!" Orion shouts as he finally forces himself out of the copy's hold and shoves it back into another wall, watching it come undone as the copy smashes into it.

"No one will care when you're one with the AllSpark, Pax." The copy taunts. "Far as they're concerned, you can't get there fast enough. Your own home was never built for you. Just another Ascendant who can't shut up."

Pax stares at the copy through ragged breaths as it finishes, "And no amount of time will ever be enough for the wounds you inflicted to heal."

"Yes there will." Pax says suddenly, only realizing his servos are clenched when he drops them, hanging freely at his sides. "Because I will be the one to heal it."

The copy laughs, then breaks into a charge right at Pax.

Only its not at him, as Pax realizes when the copy reaches him and instead of attacking, it pulls out Pax's old axe and swings at someone behind him.

It's in that singular moment that it all comes to a head.

Pax turns his helm just in time to see Sentinel standing there, defenseless.

He sees the copy's axe swing down, aimed right at Sentinel's chestplate, and there's not a doubt in Pax's mind it will snuff the spark resting inside with a single hit.

His pedes are already moving, knowing it's the only choice he can make, the only one he ever will make.

When he feels the axe cut right through his own chassis, he watches as it disintegrates on contact, and with it, the copy as well.

And finally, finally, Pax closes his optics, not watching nor caring to as the simulated Sentinel also disappears.

He hears one last thought echo through his spark before it goes out completely, the words not his own.

"No sacrifice, no victory."