The morning air in Technopia felt heavy, charged with a tension that mirrored the sparking electricity still humming in Tom's veins. In the silence of the base, a blue light pulsed. The hologram had returned. This time, the Evil Supreme God's voice was not a whisper; it was a command.
"Tech Sector-7. A container train carries a power source I require. Secure it," the dark deity ordered. "And do not let anyone stand in your way."
Robert, Tom, and Micheal exchanged looks. There was no hesitation. They boarded a sleek, black spaceship, the engines roaring with a newfound, evolved fury.
At the same time, the alarms at the base blared. Erif and Donald scrambled to the monitors. "A train hijack?" Erif shouted, his gauntlets igniting. "In Sector-7? That's the heart of the city's power grid. We have to stop them!"
When Erif and Donald arrived at the tracks, the sight froze their blood. The hijackers weren't soldiers of Iqta. They were Robert, Tom, and Micheal. They were tearing through the steel roof of a massive freight train, their movements synchronized and cold.
"Robert! Tom! What are you doing?" Erif screamed, flying alongside the speeding locomotive.
"Stay back, Erif!" Robert's voice was distorted, echoing through his ice-encrusted helmet. "This power source belongs to us now!"
The fight that followed was a chaotic blur of elemental fury. Robert, fueled by a dark instinct, mistook Erif's approach for a lethal strike. He lunged, his palms erupting with a wave of absolute-zero frost. The ice struck Erif squarely in the chest, encasing the fire-hero in a jagged, frozen tomb.
"You are trying to kill him!" Donald roared, his eyes turning a dark, tectonic brown.
Donald slammed his fists into the earth, forcing the ground beneath the tracks to rupture. He didn't just summon rocks; he tapped into a vein of crude oil deep below. With a surge of pressure, the oil geyser erupted, and Donald used the friction of the shifting earth to ignite it. The massive inferno melted the ice around Erif, but the heat was so intense it began to warp the train's metal.
"Go back at once!" Erif gasped, his fire-aura turning a brilliant blue as he absorbed the heat of the oil fire.
Tom didn't argue. He descended like a lightning bolt, striking Erif with a counterattack that sent the fire-hero tumbling across the roof of the train. The friction, the fire, and the electrical surges reached a breaking point. The train began to moan—a high-pitched screech of metal about to burst.
"It's going to blow!" Micheal shouted, summoning a massive wind-wall to shield himself and Tom as they took to the sky.
Robert looked at Erif, who lay dazed on the vibrating metal. In a moment of lingering guilt, Robert threw a protective shell of ice over both himself and Erif. But Donald, blinded by rage and misunderstanding, saw only Robert hovering over his fallen friend.
"Leave him alone!" Donald screamed. He sent a massive pillar of stone through the ice shield, shattering it into a thousand shards.
The force of the blow knocked Erif onto the center of the train just as the power source inside reached critical mass. A roar of white light swallowed the horizon. The explosion was gargantuan, a mushroom cloud of fire and steel that leveled the surrounding tracks.
Donald stood at the edge of the crater, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He used his powers to catch the falling debris, landing the jagged rocks safely away from the city, but his eyes searched the flames. He found nothing but charred metal.
With a trembling hand, Donald placed a single flower on a mound of rubble. He used his powers to carve a statue of rock in Erif's likeness—a silent, stony sentinel. "I'm sorry, brother," he whispered, turning his back on the wreckage.
But high above, Robert's spaceship was already retreating. Inside, the sensors wailed.
"Attack detected!" Rio, Robert's AI, screamed.
A massive fireball, red and blue, slammed into the ship's hull. It was Erif. He had survived the blast, his body glowing with a terrifying, celestial heat. He breached the ship's airlock and stumbled into the cockpit before fainting from exhaustion and injury. Tom caught him, his lightning-eyes softening for a moment as he looked at his broken friend.
They carried Erif back to the base, but the wounds were deep. Both in body and in spirit.
The next day, the hologram flickered one last time. This time, Iqtadar himself stood beside the Evil Supreme God. Robert, Tom, and Micheal stood before the projection, their faces hardened.
"You have the power," Iqtadar sneered. "But you still have the weakness of memory. You must forget your friends. Permanently. If you do not leave them now, we will take back the evolution we gave you."
Robert looked at Tom. Tom looked at Micheal. The choice was a jagged blade in their hearts, but the thirst for power won.
Inside the base, Donald sat by Erif's medical bed. He found a single, short message flickering on the main terminal. It was from Tom.
We are gone. Do not follow us.
The Gods of Elements had finally, irrevocably, broken.