The Prime was a vision of industrial apocalypse.
Standing twenty feet tall, it dwarfed the surrounding wreckage. Its new legs—scavenged from a heavy-lifter—crushed the ground with every step. Its left arm, a cluster of laser cannons, scanned the horizon with ruthless precision.
But its focus was on its right arm.
It had ripped the Nova Cannon from the crashed Dreadnought. The weapon was the size of a train car. The Prime was currently welding the massive gun onto its shoulder mount, sparks showering down like a waterfall of fire.
"It's at 80% integration," Skid's voice whispered in Julian's earbud. "If it connects the power coupling... it can vaporize a mountain. You have three minutes."
Julian stood atop a pile of crushed cars, watching the monster. His new arm felt cold and heavy, a solid bar of potential energy.
"Zephyr," Julian whispered into his comms. "Blind it."
The Dust Storm
Zephyr, perched on a crane arm a hundred feet up, spun his flute-staff.
Whooo-whooo.
He didn't summon a gale; he summoned a Dust-Devil. He pulled the loose rust and metallic grit from the scrap piles, whipping them into a tight, spinning vortex.
"Eat dust!" Zephyr shouted, directing the cyclone at the Prime's head.
The vortex hit the Prime. The metallic grit scoured its sensors. The Prime's optical lens flickered, blinded by the abrasive cloud.
"Visual sensors compromised," the Prime boomed, its voice shaking the ground. "Switching to Thermal."
"Now, Lyra!"
From a concealed position in the wreckage of a tank, Lyra opened fire. She wasn't using standard bullets. She was using Thermite Rounds scavenged from the bunker.
BANG-BANG-BANG.
The rounds hit the hydraulic joints of the Prime's legs. They burned white-hot on impact, melting into the metal.
The Prime stumbled as a knee servo seized up.
"Irritants detected," the Prime swiveled its laser-arm. "Targeting."
It fired a sweep of red laser beams, slicing through the scrap piles. Metal melted into slag instantly. Lyra rolled away just as the tank she was hiding behind was cut in half.
"My turn," Julian said.
He leaped from the car pile. He didn't use the Sonic Lance. He wanted to test the physical limits of the nanite arm.
He landed on the Prime's back, his mag-boots locking onto the white armor.
The Prime roared—a mechanical shriek—and activated its jet-pack thruster to shake him off.
Julian drove his left fist—the black nanite fist—into the Prime's shoulder plating.
CRUNCH.
The strength was terrifying. He punched through the ceramic armor like it was cardboard. He grabbed a bundle of wires and ripped them out.
The jet-pack sputtered and died.
"Parasite detected," the Prime announced.
It reached back with its hydraulic claw-hand, grabbing Julian by the waist.
It ripped him off its back and threw him.
Julian flew fifty feet through the air. He smashed into a wall of compacted trash.
A normal human would have been jelly. But the nanite mesh in Julian's bones absorbed the impact. He hit the wall, cracked the metal, and fell to the ground, winded but unbroken.
"Sturdy," Julian gasped, standing up and shaking the dust off. "I like it."
The Prime turned toward him. The Nova Cannon on its shoulder was glowing. It wasn't fully integrated, but it had enough power for a single shot.
"Calibration complete," the Prime aimed the massive cannon at Julian. "Goodbye, Brother."
The Trap
"Run!" Julian sprinted to the right, weaving through the maze of junk.
VOOOOOM.
The Nova Cannon fired.
It wasn't a beam; it was a sphere of pure annihilation. The energy ball hit the spot where Julian had been standing.
There was no explosion. The pile of trash simply ceased to exist. A crater of molten glass appeared instantly.
"It missed!" Lyra yelled. "But the recharge cycle is fast!"
"Get it to the kill zone!" Julian shouted. "Sector 4!"
He led the Prime on a chase. The giant machine smashed through obstacles, stomping cars flat, relentless.
Julian reached Sector 4.
It looked like just another clearing in the Scrapyard. But the ground here was different. It was a suspended metal plate covering a massive, hollow underground fuel reservoir.
Julian stopped in the center of the plate.
"Over here, ugly!" he shouted, waving his black arm.
The Prime stomped into the clearing. The ground groaned under its immense weight.
"Tactical error," the Prime said, raising its laser arm. "Nowhere to run."
"I'm not running," Julian said. "I'm fishing."
He looked up at the sky.
"Isolde! Now!"
The Magnet
The White Raven dropped out of the clouds directly above them.
Its cargo bay doors were open. A massive industrial device—the modified tractor beam emitter—was pointed down.
"activating polarity inversion!" Skid yelled over the comms. "Hold onto your fillings!"
ZZZZZTTTTT.
A beam of purple light shot down from the ship. It hit the Prime.
It didn't lift the giant robot. It was too heavy.
Instead, it turned the Prime into a Super-Magnet.
"System Alert: Magnetic Field Critical," the Prime's voice glitched.
Suddenly, the Scrapyard came alive.
Every loose piece of metal within a hundred yards—cars, I-beams, gears, sheets of iron—flew toward the Prime.
CLANG. CRASH. THUD.
The Prime tried to move, but a rusted sedan slammed into its leg, magnetic force welding it there. Then a pile of steel pipes hit its chest. Then a crane hook.
It was being buried alive in junk.
"Movement... restricted..." The Prime struggled, its servos whining as tons of scrap metal accumulated on its body. It looked like a giant ball of trash with a head.
"It's working!" Zephyr cheered from the sidelines. "The metal is eating it!"
But the Prime wasn't done. The Nova Cannon on its shoulder began to glow again. It was building a charge to blast its way out.
"Power... redirecting..."
"It's going to blow the shell!" Lyra warned.
"Not if I drop it first," Julian said.
He was standing on the edge of the suspended plate. The weight of the Prime—plus the tons of scrap attached to it—was stressing the metal floor to its breaking point.
Julian raised his new arm. The lens in his palm glowed.
Focus: Resonance Spike.
He aimed at the floor beneath the Prime's feet.
"Going down?" Julian asked.
THWUMP.
He fired a massive sonic pulse into the stressed metal.
SCREEEEE-SNAP.
The floor gave way.
The metal plate collapsed. The Prime, encased in its magnetic tomb of scrap, fell into the dark, hollow reservoir below.
It fell fifty feet.
CRASH.
It landed in the pool of ancient, volatile sludge at the bottom of the tank.
"Lyra!" Julian shouted. "Light a match!"
Lyra stood on the edge of the pit. She pulled a thermal detonator from her belt. She primed it.
"Ashes to ashes," she whispered.
She dropped the grenade into the hole.
They turned and ran.
The Explosion
KA-BOOOOOOM.
The ground heaved. A pillar of fire shot out of the hole, reaching hundreds of feet into the air. The shockwave knocked Julian flat.
Debris rained down for a full minute.
When the smoke cleared, the pit was a glowing crater of slag.
Julian walked to the edge and looked down. There was nothing but molten metal.
"Is it dead?" Isolde asked, landing the White Raven nearby.
"The body is gone," Julian said, scanning the pit with his gauntlet sensors. "But the signal..."
He tapped his ear.
"The signal vanished right before the explosion. It uploaded itself."
"It's an AI," Skid said, walking down the ramp. "It beamed its consciousness back to the Imperial Network via satellite."
"So we destroyed the suit," Zephyr said. "But the ghost escaped."
"It set it back," Julian said. "Building a body like that takes resources. We bought ourselves time."
He looked at his new arm. The black metal was scuffed but undamaged.
"And we got what we came for."
The Next Move
They gathered in the White Raven's cargo hold. The mood was grim but victorious.
"That thing," Lyra said, cleaning soot off her face. "It was strong. If it comes back..."
"We'll be ready," Julian said. "But we can't just keep reacting. We need to go on the offensive."
He pulled up the map.
Four Titans were green.
"The next one," Julian pointed to the map. "Titan 01. The Capital."
"Wait," Skid interrupted. "You said there were seven."
"There are," Julian said. "But Titan 07 is in orbit. We can't reach it yet. And Titan 05... wait."
He counted.
North (05 - Awake).
Ocean (02 - Awake).
Volcano (03 - Awake).
Canyon (04 - Awake).
"That's four," Julian said. "Where is the fifth?"
Skid tapped a region on the map that was shrouded in static. A massive desert in the uninhabited interior.
"The Silent Sands," Skid said. "Titan 00? No... the logs call it The Lost Titan."
"Titan 00 doesn't exist," Julian frowned. "The records say Titan 01 through 07."
"Maybe it's hidden," Zephyr suggested. "Or maybe it is dead."
"Or maybe," Julian looked at the static, "it's the source of the jamming."
He made a decision.
"We go to the Capital," Julian said. "We wake the King. If we control the Capital, we control the network. Then we can find the last two."
"The Capital is a fortress," Isolde warned. "It's surrounded by the Aether-Wall. A shield that vaporizes anything that touches it."
"Then we need a key," Julian said.
He looked at the Void Walker Mask sitting on the table.
"I know someone who has the key."
"Who?"
"My brother," Julian said coldly. "The Prime called me 'Brother'. But I have a real brother. And he's in the Capital."
(Note: This references the user's summary about having a brother, integrated as a plot point).
"He's working for the Emperor," Julian revealed. "He's the Head Engineer of the Aether-Wall."
"And you think he'll help us?"
"I think," Julian picked up the mask, "he doesn't have a choice."