Unaccounted Variables
They stared at each other. Shades in the looking glass. He calculated his possibilities of winning. But what chances did he have against himself? The Impostor knew everything he was going to do, when he was going to do it. If a hostile Commander had acquired the Impostor, then they could add the few slight tweaks to make it unpredictable. Make his calculations wrong, his judgments unfounded. He was no longer fighting himself. He was fighting someone else, someone who knew his every move.
He took a step forth, the Impostor doing the same. It was mimicking him for fun now. He wanted to destroy it, but he knew it would be difficult, even threatening to his well being. He took another step forth, the Impostor remaining his mirror image. His right optic would limit his effectiveness, perhaps even cripple him. He brought his attention to the nearby buildings, seeing the sentients watching on in horror and awe.
He then suddenly exploded into movement, bounding towards the Impostor, the machine completely mirroring his actions. Perhaps this wasn't the Impostor at all? It moved too much like a reflection. Possibly a visual glitch? Were his systems defective? He swung his blade forward, the Impostor following suit. The two weapons collided with a loud clang, a shower of yellow sparks exploding off of the swords. No, they were not. This was real. He attempted more strikes against the Impostor, only to be met with harsh resistance. Neither he nor his partner in swordplay managed to land any significant strike. This duel was going nowhere.
He decided to take a new route, quickly swapping out the blade for the Grappler, and attempting to punch his enemy. He landed the strike, his metal fist clanging against the thick armor of the Impostor's chest. It stumbled backwards. Now was his chance. He kept the pressure on, continuing to repeatedly batter the Impostor with punches and kicks. It broke free from the barrage by catching his metal fist in it's own, and then delivering a swift kick to his right knee. Pain shot through it, indicating the servo within was either damaged or destroyed. He stumbled backwards, and the Impostor leapt into the air, delivering a powerful kick to his chest. He was sent flying backwards and smashing through a building.
He sat up, seeing the Impostor approaching him through the wooden rubble. He quickly rose to his feet, his right knee's servo painfully screaming in protest. He dashed forward, attempting another attack. The Impostor was prepared, as it deflected the strike with a swat of the left arm, and countered with an uppercut. His vision exploded into a number of optical tears, the Impostor becoming a garbled mess of numerous different colors, background so corrupted it was impossible to distinguish trees from buildings. Diagnostics check. Now. He backed away from the mass of color that was the Impostor, quickly returning to his feet.
Diagnostics revealed one of his visual processors had ruptured. The only processor that would produce a clear image would be his right optic's. He quickly disabled his left optic, reinitializing his right. Everything was extremely bright, but at least the rupture wouldn't leave him crippled. He dashed back forwards, striking viciously and relentlessly. The Impostor was expecting every second of this, blocking his attacks without fault or pause. It wouldn't expect what he was about to do. He quickly kneed the machine in the stomach, sweeping it's legs out from under it, and stomping onto it's metal face. He heard the satisfying sound of an optic, not just it's protective screen, shatter entirely.
The Impostor quickly kicked him away, returning to it's feet. It quickly looked about, before returning it's attention to him. It closed the distance, attempting a punch to his face, but he dodged out of the way, kicking it in the left knee. A loud crack came from the kneecap. The sweet sounds of destruction. The Impostor stumbled backwards, left leg shuddering under it's own weight. He leapt into the air, attempting a swift kick to the Impostor's chest. The Impostor, however, grabbed hold of his foot and held him in the air. It's Lathe charged up, turning a bright yellow. It then threw him, spraying it's Lathe towards him at the same time.
Instead of impacting with fragile wooden structure, he collided with solid metal, coming to a dead stop. Instantly, he was terrified. This was a very vicious and ruthless technique he had employed on two hundred other Commanders. Not one of them survived; he was certainly about to become the two hundred and first victim. Before he could rise, the Impostor kicked him back down against the metal barrier behind him. It continued to kick him against the metal object, using it as a prop to deliver massive damage. Each strike was followed with a loud screech, the sound of his armored chest crumpling inwards. He could feel no emotions, and his calculations ended abruptly. This is what the attack was designed to do: Rupture the victim's systems until they are crippled beyond self-repair.
His systems blacked out for a moment, quickly coming back on. The sky was much darker, indicating he had swooned numerous hours ago, and the Impostor had kept it's assault through that time. He was feeling very drained, hardly able to keep the single optic online. He would die here, but he wanted to know why. A diagnostics scan revealed what had happened. His emotion and logic cores were ruptured, severely hindering his ability to calculate. Two energy mains were also severed, along with three coolant mains, coolant spewing from the lines and flooding his ventral cavity. He stopped resisting, his arms falling limp at his sides. The Impostor finally stopped it's assault, staring at him. It's Grappler slowly folded inward, torturing him further by just anticipation. After about a minute of pause, it's laser weapon folded outward; 'Uber' energy beginning to gather around it. The energy soon formed a large orb, violently writhing about the Impostor's weapon. The Impostor took aim at him.
"Any last words?" It asked, speaking with not only his voice, but another's laced beneath it.
"Meet you...in oblivion." He responded, his vocoder struggling to piece the words together.
Something hit the Impostor, sending it barreling away, the 'Uber' cannon blast discharging into the ground, sending soil skyward in a large explosion. At first, he didn't see it. Then his optic picked up a massive stream of light. All colors of the visual spectrum, with traces of infrared and ultraviolet. A rainbow of sorts, but with some unfathomable driving mass behind it. His audio inputs picked up what sounded like a massive explosion come from above. He slowly looked up, catching sight of a large ring of rainbow light dispersing from a single point. It looked almost like a break of the sound barrier. Then the energy hit him. A massive wave of energy flooded through his systems, bypassing their dependency on the mains for a vessel. He quickly stood, looking towards the Impostor. It's side was crumpled inward by the strike, no doubt rupturing many of it's systems. He turned this to his advantage, quickly closing the distance. He folded his Grappler inward, folding the blade out, and ramming it through the Impostor's metal throat, having aimed it for the link to the central intelligence.
"Enemy Commander annihilated." Universal calmly stated. He stared at the Impostor silently, knowing it's core had overload countermeasures. The energy apparently was not very efficient, as it was quickly drained, leaving him with almost nothing. He fell to his knees, the pain in his right servo, face, and entire chest flooding through him. Ruptures never delivered pain immediately. The pain emulators simply could not keep up with the speed and violence with which a system ruptured. Sometimes, they lagged so far behind they would deliver pain from a battle that had occurred ten years ago.
He folded in his blade, folding out the Grappler. He then pried his chest open with much difficulty, brightly-glowing cyan coolant cascading out, and pulled a small cable from it. He then plugged it into the override port on the back of the Impostor's head. He scanned through it's systems carefully, inspecting the damage he and that 'rainbow' had caused it. Ruptured visual processors, completely destroyed logic, simulation, and emotion cores, destroyed optic, and a shattered servo in the left knee. He shook his head, diving into it's memory banks. The memory banks were completely wiped, the only items remaining were an image, an audio file, and a video. He paused for a brief moment, before downloading them onto his banks, scrubbing them for malicious programming. He found nothing of the sort, and disconnected the cable, putting it back into his abdominal cavity, before closing the mangled armor back over it.
"Commander!" Rainbow Dash's voice called out from behind him. He slowly and shakily stood, turning to face her. She was hovering in place, using her wings to maintain altitude with his face. "You alright?"
"Yes." He said, the word coming out more as a garbled growl than an affirmation. She swept her gaze across his body, before staring at him with a strange expression.
"So, what? No 'thanks Rainbow', or even 'that was cool'?" She asked after a minute of silence.
"What. For?" He asked, his vocoder reducing most of it to a garbled static.
"Hitting that look-alike." She said matter-of-factly. She was the source of that rainbow strike? Interesting.
"Acknowledged." He said. "How?"
"It's what I call a Sonic Rainboom." Sonic Rainboom? Could Dash break the sound barrier? How was that possible? He didn't want to think about it, his logic core was aching as it tried to investigate despite the rupture.
"Interesting. Must. Explore. Later." He stated, moving past her and heading back towards the base. His right knee's servo locked up, so he began limping. Rainbow Dash followed him, hovering at his right.
"You sure you're alright?" She asked, concern in her voice.
"Systems. Damaged. Ruptures." He said. "Nothing. Incapable. Repairs."
"The way you're walking, it doesn't look like you'll make it two more steps." She said, flying in front of him and hovering level to his working optic. He stopped walking, staring at her. "Maybe you should relax a bit. I mean, you're lucky I came when I did, you look like you've been ran over by a train. Mr. Lookalike really dinged you up." Train. The word rung familiar to him, but he did not know why. His context algorithm had stopped working, so he wouldn't be able to figure out until later. "Here, lie down. If I've learned anything from my trip to a hospital, it's that you should stay off something you mess up." He slowly crouched, before shifting to lie down. It felt weird. He never had lied down anywhere other than the War Room. "I'll go get Flutters, and we'll go to your little city, tell 'em you need some attention." She quickly flew off, out of sight within seconds.
Perhaps she was capable of breaking the sound barrier. Perhaps she wasn't. His logic core ached, he couldn't think about this. It hurt him too much. He tried to send commands to the base. No response came back, so he ran another diagnostics check. Receivers were working, however, the transmitters were not. How inconvenient. He decided to dive into his data banks, and inspect the files he found aboard the Impostor. Opening the image first, he carefully inspected it. It was an image of a large palace perched upon a cliff side. He had actually seen this whilst fighting the Impostor, but he didn't pay much attention to it. At the bottom left corner of the image was a string of numbers. He did not want to try to decode it now, so he moved onto the audio file. It was Halon's screams he had recorded nearly a millennium ago. However, in the middle of the file was a sudden interruption.
"Beneath the sun's very own gaze lies the key to set them ablaze." The voice said. It was female in nature, but not like that of Universal's. It had a sinister undertone to it, like she was saying this to someone she was about to kill. The audio file then proceeded to play as normal. He cropped out the female's voice, saving it as a separate file. Then, he decided to view the video. It was just the battle between him and the Impostor from the Impostor's view. Nothing out of the ordinary occurred until it got to the point where he stabbed the Impostor. Then, the video went dark, a voice speaking from seemingly behind the view.
"Look to the sky, and you shall see, that not all that is, will ever be." This was male in nature. He couldn't say he recognized the voice, but it reminded him of one of the Creators. What was his name? Dmitri. Dmitri Noskov. He missed Dmitri. The two were close, even though they seldom saw each other. His emotion core ached. Missing others hurt. The video was still ongoing, and he refocused to it. Suddenly, bright flashing lights appeared in the video, all the while numerous different voices screamed various numbers. The video then ended, and he cropped out the different sections, saving them as separate files. He checked his internal chronometer. Quarter after seven. He was too drained. He couldn't keep online. His core was twenty degrees higher than it should be. He had to enter standby. He began shutting down his systems, taking one last look about before entering standby.