Low Earth Orbit had become a coliseum.
On one side hovered the Iron Star. It was a moon-sized sphere of jagged scrap metal, satellite wreckage, and asteroid rock, all held together by a blinding core of golden Aether. It pulsed like a dying heart, its surface bristling with thousands of scavenged cannons.
On the other side floated the Harmonic Prime. A towering knight of fused elemental gods—Gold, Ice, Magma, Wind, Water, Time. It stood against the backdrop of the stars, its thrusters burning with the light of a small sun.
Inside the cockpit (the modified control room of Titan 00), Julian sat suspended in a neural-link field. He didn't use a joystick. He moved his arms, and the Titan moved.
"You look ridiculous," Emperor Valerius's voice broadcasted on all frequencies. "A patchwork doll stitched together with hope."
"It's not a doll," Julian replied, his voice amplified by the Titan's transmitters. "It's an orchestra."
He clenched his fist. The Harmonic Prime clenched its massive hand, the sound of grinding tectonic plates vibrating through the hull.
"And we're ready to play."
The Debris Storm
The Iron Star attacked first.
The Emperor didn't fire a laser. He fired the Junkyard.
A swarm of millions of metal shards—old hull plates, bolts, shattered solar panels—launched from the Star's surface. It was a shotgun blast the size of a continent, moving at orbital velocity.
"Incoming density: Critical!" Skid yelled from the tactical station. "It's a shredder cloud!"
"Shields!" Julian ordered.
Titan 05 (Ice) responded. The Prime's left arm, covered in the Frost-Breaker's armor, raised up.
A wall of Absolute Zero energy projected forward.
The debris hit the cold field.
CRASH-CRASH-CRASH.
The metal didn't bounce off. It shattered. The extreme cold made the steel brittle as glass. The Prime punched through the cloud of frozen dust, emerging unscathed.
"Counter-attack!" Zephyr shouted. "Burn him!"
Julian swung his right arm—the arm powered by Titan 03 (Magma).
He didn't punch. He snapped his fingers.
FLICK.
A Plasma Whip erupted from the Titan's hand—a lash of condensed solar fire.
Julian swung the whip. It crossed the distance of space in a second.
CRACK.
The whip struck the surface of the Iron Star. It sliced through a mile of scrap metal armor, melting a glowing canyon into the Emperor's shell.
"Annoying," Valerius muttered.
The Gravity Well
The Iron Star rotated. A massive crater on its surface aligned with the Prime.
"You use fire," Valerius said. "I use mass."
GRAVITY: SINGULARITY.
The crater activated. It wasn't a black hole; it was a Tractor Beam on steroids.
The Harmonic Prime was yanked forward. The g-forces inside the cockpit spiked to 15 Gs.
"He's pulling us in!" Marcus grunted, fighting to keep the stabilizers online. "He's going to crush us against his hull!"
"Reverse thrusters!" Isolde slammed the controls.
Titan 04 (Wind) spun its rings furiously, trying to fight the pull. But the gravity was too strong. They were dragging closer to the jagged metal surface.
"We can't fight the pull!" Julian realized. "So we use it!"
"What?"
"If he wants us close," Julian grinned, blood trickling from his nose, "let's get close."
"Divert all power to the Hydro-Drill!"
Julian pointed the Prime's legs (powered by Titan 02/Water) toward the Iron Star.
"Full speed ahead!"
The Prime stopped fighting the gravity. It accelerated into the pull.
They rocketed toward the Star like a meteor.
"Impact in 3... 2... 1..."
Julian extended the Titan's knee. A pressurized spike of water, hard as diamond, extended.
SMASH.
The Prime slammed into the Iron Star feet-first. The impact shook the entire orbital station. The Hydro-Drill punched deep into the scrap armor, burying the Prime up to its waist in the enemy's body.
"We're boarded!" Lyra yelled. "Point blank range!"
The Surface War
The Prime stood on the surface of the Iron Star.
It was a nightmare landscape of twisted metal valleys and towers of crushed starships.
"Get him off!" Valerius roared.
The surface of the Star came alive. Turrets unfolded from the scrap. Tentacles of magnetized iron rose up to grab the Prime's limbs.
"Melee mode!" Julian ordered.
The Prime drew a Greatsword. The blade was made of Titan 01's Gold Hard-Light, cooled by Titan 05's Ice.
Julian swung.
SHING.
He cut a turret tower in half.
He spun, decapitating a massive crane that tried to grab him.
"Left flank!" Skid warned.
A massive blast of Void energy shot from a bunker.
Julian raised the Chronos Shield (Titan 00).
The beam hit the shield and... stopped. Time froze around the impact. The energy dissipated harmlessly.
"He's hiding in the core!" Marcus analyzed the scans. "We have to dig him out! We need to breach the crust!"
"I can breach it," Julian said. "But I need a charge-up."
"We'll buy you time," Zephyr said. "Titan 04, engage Storm Protocol!"
The Prime's shoulder rings detached. They flew around the Titan like drones, firing blades of compressed air, keeping the automated defenses at bay.
Julian focused. He channeled power into the Prime's chest—the Magma Reactor.
Heat... Pressure... release.
He placed both hands on the surface of the Iron Star.
MAGMA ERUPTION.
He didn't shoot lava at the star. He injected lava into it.
He pumped millions of gallons of superheated rock into the cracks of the Emperor's armor.
The Iron Star groaned. The metal plates began to glow red. Steam vented into space.
"Enough!" Valerius shrieked.
The Dissonance Gambit
The Iron Star pulsed.
A wave of energy hit the Prime. Not heat. Not gravity.
Silence.
It was the Emperor's signature move. A wave of Anti-Resonance.
It hit the Prime's neural link.
Suddenly, the cockpit went dark. The hum of the six Titans vanished.
Inside Julian's mind, the connection fractured.
He heard the Titans screaming.
Titan 03 wanted to burn.
Titan 05 wanted to freeze.
Titan 02 wanted to swim.
Titan 00 wanted to sleep.
They were separating. The harmony was breaking.
The Harmonic Prime slumped. Its eyes went dark. The Magma arm flailed, hitting the Ice arm. The legs tried to walk away from the torso.
"You see?" Valerius's voice whispered in the dark. "They are beasts. They cannot coexist. Order requires a single will. You are trying to herd cats."
The iron tentacles wrapped around the paralyzed Prime. They began to crush it. The cockpit groaned.
"Julian!" Lyra shook him. "Wake up! We're losing containment!"
"They're fighting each other!" Skid yelled. "The fusion is failing!"
Julian clutched his head. The noise in his brain was deafening. Six gods arguing in six different languages.
Fire! Ice! Now! Later!
"Shut up!" Julian screamed.
He didn't try to force them. He didn't try to be the Emperor.
He remembered the Canyon of Whispers. He remembered Zephyr teaching him to ride the wind.
Don't fight the chaos. Ride it.
He twisted the Black-Iron ring.
He didn't play a melody. He played a Jazz Chord.
A dissonant, complex, messy chord that used every note at once.
Rust is messy, Julian projected. Life is messy. We don't need to be perfect. We just need to be loud.
He grabbed the controls.
"Jazz improvisation!" Julian shouted.
The Breakout
The Prime's eyes flared back to life. But they weren't a uniform color. One eye was red, one was blue. The chest glowed gold. The legs swirled with water.
The Titan moved. It didn't move gracefully. It moved with a chaotic, unpredictable rhythm.
It headbutted the iron tentacle.
It bit the turret with the Ice-Wolf's jaws.
It kicked the bunker with the Magma-Leg.
"What is this?" Valerius sounded confused. "This movement... it has no pattern!"
"You can't predict it!" Julian laughed, sweat pouring down his face. "Because even I don't know what we're doing next!"
The Prime broke free of the tentacles.
It grabbed a massive spire of scrap metal.
"Isolde! Overload the arm!"
"Which one?"
"Both!"
Julian infused the scrap-spire with Fire and Ice simultaneously.
Thermal Shock.
He drove the spire into the main fissure he had created earlier.
CRACK-BOOM.
The thermal stress shattered a tectonic plate of the Iron Star. A massive chunk of the Emperor's armor—the size of a city—broke off and floated away into space.
Underneath, the Core was exposed.
It wasn't a machine.
It was Valerius.
He was a giant now. A titan made of pure, blinding Golden Light, sitting in the center of the hollow sphere.
He looked small in the vastness of space, but the energy reading was off the charts.
"You broke my shell," Valerius said, rising from his throne of debris.
He grew. He expanded. He didn't need the metal anymore.
He became a Celestial Avatar. A being of light as large as the Prime.
"Now," Valerius raised a sword made of starlight. "We fight soul to soul."